Reposted from old blog. Please bookmark.

Freelance artists often go without health insurance. They have no employers to provide it, or claim they cannot afford it.

Here’s a great online resource for artists and other self employed people seeking health insurance. Just click on the map of your state, and a comprehensive listing of available organizations and insurance options will be made available to you. This goes for artists of all kinds, but also applies to low income families, the disabled, etc. Please bookmark this.

In the last week, I have read a number of creators and people in the industry posting ill-informed items about the lack of health insurance options for the self employed and for creators in particular. One woman flatly stated that the only reason she had never quit her job and started her own company was because she knew self employed people could not get insurance. This is simply false.

As a self employed person, I have never been unable to get health insurance, and when I started out, was only paying about $134 a month. For those who fear giving up insurance while just leaving school or a job, there are companies that also offer affordable short term health insurance that can run from 30 days to 6 months.

Don’t think you can’t afford insurance and then give up seeking it without even trying to look though this site.

Some organizations offer a flat health insurance fee to ALL members. I used to belong to the National Association for the Self Employed and all members paid the same rate. I have read many complaints about the NASE plan, and left them many years ago, having no complaints myself.

I got an even better deal with Anthem/Blue Cross Blue Shield for comprehensive health care, including dental insurance, for $200 a month.

I had no problems with the NASE, I simply get what I need elsewhere. The Graphic Artists Guild suited my needs more. I recommend you seek out both and make your own decision. You may want to belong to both. I did for awhile.

Just go to the insurance resource website and click on the state in which you live. You will then see a long list of options. Don’t just study one category such as “graphic artists”. Also look under “self employed”, “visual arts” and other categories. You’d be surprised how many categories may apply to you, even when you live in places you may think don’t have resources that suit the needs of creators. EVERY state has resources for you.

Since I live on a farm, if need be, I could also qualify under several categories for income assistance and insurance for farmers. So, be sure to check out a variety of categories.

Check out the United States Federation of Small Business, which comes with many benefits, yet costs only $100 to join. The Graphic Artist Guild health plan is administered, in part, through this organization. By all accounts, this is a good plan. I just ran the numbers for a friend who was sure he could not get health insurance, and one inquiry gave us a quote of only $145 a month, easily within his budget. That’s less money per month than he spent going to San Diego Comic Con in one fell swoop, that’s for damn sure.

Over half of all Americans get some kind of government assistance. They may be businesspeople, or farmers, or low income families. Regardless, you pay taxes for a reason. This is your money. There are many government assistance plans listed on the site. Please avail yourself of these services, if you genuinely need them. That is what they are there for, and you paid for them.

Don’t assume that because you are low income, you don’t have resources.

By the way, don’t expect insurance to pay for every case of the flu and every little illness. This kind of thinking keeps premiums high. Go for the absolute HIGHEST deductible you can afford. Insurance is supposed to cover you in case of catastrophic illness. You are paying that premium in the event that someday you are going to have a major case of cancer or something.

Try to keep your deductible high and then sock the extra money you save on the premium every month away in a money market plan or some other savings vehicle. You will have a better return in your insurance investment that way. By taking a high deductible, I save about $75 a month, or $900 per year. $900 a year more than covers whatever out of pocket I may have, and in ten years at 9% compound interest, that’s a savings of $16,828. That’s more than three times the size of my deductible, so on the off chance I do get a major illness and need out of pocket cash, I will have it, as well as a reserve.

Also, look into a health savings plan. I did not know about these until recently, and they were signed into law in 2003. These are like IRA savings accounts for people who opt for low cost, catastrophic insurance plans, and back them up with these savings accounts. The deposits are tax free, and as long as the funds are used to pay for your qualifying medical expenses, they remain tax free. If you are a relatively healthy person at this time, these are a great option to consider.

There are different considerations for the employed and the self employed, so do some research.

What Is a “High Deductible Health Plan” (HDHP)?
You must have an HDHP if you want to open an HSA. Sometimes referred to as a “catastrophic” health insurance plan, an HDHP is an inexpensive health insurance plan that generally doesn’t pay for the first several thousand dollars of health care expenses (i.e., your “deductible” but will generally cover you after that . Of course, your HSA is available to help you pay for the expenses your plan does not cover.

For 2005, in order to qualify to open an HSA, your HDHP minimum deductible must be at least $1,000 (self-only coverage) or $2,000 (family coverage). For 2006, the amounts increase to $1,050 and $2,100, respectively. The annual out-of-pocket (including deductibles and co-pays) for 2005 cannot exceed $5,100 (self-only coverage) or $10,200 (family coverage). For 2006, these amounts increase to $5,250 and $10,500, respectively. HDHPs can have first dollar coverage (no deductible) for preventive care and apply higher out-of-pocket limits (and co pays & coinsurance) for non-network services.

But remember, a self employed person who is paying out of pocket for their own health insurance enjoys a 50% tax deduction. Be sure to calculate your tax savings as a deduction from the cost of your insurance.

For example, if you can’t afford $200 a month, remember that $100 of your insurance payment is not taxable. Say you are being taxed at 20%. That’s $20 a month. So your actual insurance cost is only $180 a month.

c

Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts is happy to announce two great new events in the new year — please join us for either, or both!

One-Day Negotiation Training: Tuesday, January 27th; please click here to register

Litigation Workshop: Thursday, January 29th

Details:

One-Day Negotiation Training
When: Tuesday, January 27, 2009: 10am — 6pm
Where: Manhattan Location TBA.
Who: For both artists and attorneys.
CLE: YES, CLE credit is being offered for this event. Mostly Areas of Professional Practice credits and Skills credits, plus 1 Ethics credit. This program qualifies as transitional for newly admitted attorneys.
Cost:
– Artists: $100 with registration by January 9th; $150 after January 9th
– Attorneys: $275 with registration by January 9th; $325 after January 9th
Note: The completion of this program does NOT qualify you to be a volunteer through MediateArt, VLA’s mediation, contract negotiation, and negotiation counseling department. Serving as a MediateArt volunteer requires the completion of our MediateArt Training Program, to be offered later in 2009.

Program Description: A one-day overview of basic and more advanced negotiation skills, including contract negotiation and deal mediation (deal memo mediation). This is a good overview of negotiation for anyone, regardless of area of discipline, although there will be some focus on arts and entertainment issues in particular.

——————————

Litigation Workshop: “The Nuts and Bolts of Entertainment Law Litigation”
Co-sponsored by EASL, the Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law section of the New York State Bar Association
When: Thursday, January 29, 2009: 6pm — 8pm
Where: VLA’s Lobby Auditorium; 1 East 53rd Street (northeast corner of 53rd & 5th).
Who: For both artists and attorneys, but primarily geared towards artists.
CLE: NO, CLE credit is not being offered for this event.
Cost: $25 for artists; $50 for attorneys

Program Description: This two-hour program will cover “the nuts and bolts of entertainment law litigation,” including how to draft and reply to cease and desist letters, and what happens if you ignore one; how to initiate a lawsuit and how to reply to one; how to find a lawyer if you want to sue someone or need to defend a lawsuit; and what happens once litigation has been initiated, including how to analyze when and whether to settle.

Since 1969, Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts has been the leading provider of pro bono legal services, mediation services, educational programs and publications, and advocacy to the arts community in New York. The first arts-related legal aid organization, VLA is the model for similar organizations around the world. For more information about Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, please see www.vlany.org.

Reposted from the old blog where it was posted only last week. But good reviews need to be preserved for posterity.

This is one of those blog reviews that makes you dance and sing, and very happy you got out of bed in the morning.

I know it is the way of the big ego to be too happy with good reviews, but this writer hit many of the points I am trying to make with my book, so that has given me a boost. From Cheerful Megalomaniac:

One of the things that I was extremely surprised to see in there, is a man’s addiction to the “Nexus” a communications network somewhat akin to the internet. He actually becomes numb to humanity because he is so enthralled by the flow of information; whats the point in knowing everything, if you care for nothing? Any comic book that looks at the effect extreme internet addiction can have on someone life, but more importantly WHY the internet is so seductive, is pretty fine, IMHO.

You know, I created that scene before I ever spent a little too much time on the internet, having to download Leechblock, so I really do need to listen to the warnings in my own stories!

Click the SHOP link above to buy my books.

And thanks, Cheerful Megalomaniac!

c

Look, it’s Major Kovar’s grand daddy.

From Eroica With Love is my favorite manga of all time. I was deliriously happy to see it snag an honorable mention on Publishers Weekly’s 2008 best graphic novels of the year. It is published in the USA by CMX manga, which is a division of DC Comics.

From Eroica With Love was the first manga I ever saw, and it is one of the best. Many manga don’t have stories strong enough to sustain the pretty pictures. From Eroica with Love is a manga in which the story is as strong as the art.

Take a flamboyant gay thief, team him up with a cranky, repressed NATO officer, and you get one of the funniest, and most entertaining manga of all time. From Eroica With Love is a classic of the shuojo genre, but the writing is sharper and wittier than the usual fare.

The translations in the American edition are quite good, though the NATO Major’s epithets appear to be toned down somewhat. I think he’s really screaming “You faggot!” at Eroica, but this edition has him running around screaming “You degenerate!” Doesn’t quite have the same bite, and the verbal barbs are half the fun of the series (don’t worry, this book is not a gay bashing fest. It’s just that the Major has issues.)

Usually I am disappointed with manga imports because I imagined the writing would be a lot better when I finally got to read my favorite picture stories in English. Sadly, my imagination has done a lot of favors for bland manga, and I’ve lost interest in books I loved in Japanese. Eroica is actually better in English.

For first timers, you may want to skip volume I. It has no resemblance to the rest of the series and is so insanely goofy it may turn you off to the work entirely. Any book with characters named Sugarplum and Leopard is suspect. Those characters never appear in the series again, and good riddance. The series is quickly taken over by the infamous thief Eroica, and it’s a roller coaster from there. I have the first 10 or so. The art style is very 1970′s, so for kicks, play the soundtrack of The Velvet Underground while reading.

This series was a huge influence on A Distant Soil (see pic above…that’s not Kovar, it’s Klaus), but there is no resemblance between the two books beyond that character’s haircut. A Distant Soil was already in publication before I saw From Eroica with Love, but I was getting a lot of flak from my publishers about my aesthetic taste, my inking style, and my deconstructed storytelling. After seeing From Eroica with Love, and realizing that everything I was trying to do had not only been done, but was common in a comic book land far across the Pacific, I stuck to my guns and stopped letting myself be bullied by my publishers.

The oddest thing about that was that one of my US clients claimed to be quite fond of manga, but whenever my own work showed a hint of manga-esque style, they tried to get me to stop. Weird. I think they may not have liked the competition. Manga was a pretty esoteric field of interest back then (1980′s), and I’ve noticed that some people get proprietary about their interests.

Anyway, there was no manga influence on the development of my book, so I am always surprised when people call A Distant Soil Amerimanga.

The above image comes from a limited edition Eroica art book. It came with an interactive cd that no longer works with my computer. Only works on OS 9, drat! However, this screen saver of Kovar is the desktop theme on my laptop.

Major Kovar was such a popular character when I first introduced him into A Distant Soil that I got no less than six claims of ownership from six different fanfic authors, all claiming they had created a character just like him and I had stolen him from them. That’s some feat, stealing the same guy from six different people. Especially since every A Distant Soil fan knows I was inspired primarily by a character from Yasuko Aioke’s From Eroica With Love. Heh. I deliberately changed Kovar’s hair from blonde to brunette just because I liked Klaus’s haircut. But, you know, you can’t copyright a haircut.

If you are interested in the series, here’s a few links to get you going.

Here is the CMX official webpage for From Eroica With Love.

This site by fans and for fans is pretty comprehensive.

This livejournal is a terrific resource for Eroica fans. It has links to interviews with the creator of Eroica, and lots of other cool stuff. She also uses a picture of Major Kovar in there! Funny!

Yes, that is a woman dressed as Klaus in a few of those pics. I seem to recall some plans to create an Eroica musical with the all female Japanese review Takarazuka, but I may be mistaken. That could just be from a Takarazuka photo shoot.

Because Major Klaus is German, this inspired the vacation plans of many Eroica fans. An interesting tidbit from the website:

Incidentally, the popularity of Eroica in Japan caused a marked increase in Japanese tourism to the towns of Bonn and Eberbach. The tourist board investigated why, and when they found out, they made Aoike an honorary citizen of Bonn.

Yasuko Aoike’s official website can be found here. It is in Japanese, but there’s still some fun stuff to be had.

I hope you will check out this series. It is one of those books I enjoyed so much I bought extras for friends. You may actually want to start out with Volumes 2 or 3. The first volume kind of runs off and goes in directions that are quickly abandoned by the creator.

Moselle Green wrote to let me know that she has faboo pics of the all-female theater group Takarazuka cosplaying Eroica. This is the sort of thing that delights me, and makes me giggle like a madwoman. Go see it here.

Portions of this post were cribbed from the old website. Thanks to Leslie Sternbergh for introducing me to From Eroica with Love and all things manga!