Dance, Boy

As the haves and have-mores scratch their way into the top tenth of the top one percent, other portions of New York City’s labor pool have reverted to bartering for basic services:

In a groundbreaking program that’s been a runaway success since the Daily News profiled it last year, hundreds of uninsured artists across the city have signed up to barter their talents for health care.

“This was uncharted territory,” said Dr. Edward Fishkin, medical director at Woodhull Hospital and the brain behind ArtistAccess, which has enrolled more than 350 uninsured dancers, actors and painters.

“I honestly didn’t know what would happen. [But] we have exceeded expectations,” Fishkin said.

The artists like the idea of offering their services for health care, he said.

“They didn’t want to look like they’re getting charity,” he said.

The Williamsburg hospital now fields up to 30 calls a week from artists who want to participate, he said.

It also has caught on at other city hospitals. A dozen artists at Manhattan’s Bellevue Hospital have been bartering since March, and Kings County Hospital officials are looking into starting the program there.

After creating collages with pediatric patients at Woodhull, mixed-media artist Janet Olivia Henry, 59, banked enough credits for a physical.

“It makes a huge, huge difference, being able to get a doctor’s visit, just attending to keeping well,” said Henry of Jamaica, Queens, a part-time preschool art teacher who doesn’t have health insurance.

Watercolor painter Timothy Lunceford, 49, who lives in Greenwich Village, racked up $2,500 in medical bills after twice being hospitalized at Bellevue for heart problems.

“I didn’t feel like walking away,” Lunceford said of his obligations, adding that he couldn’t have paid his bills without the bartering program.