{"id":1879,"date":"2006-12-11T09:37:20","date_gmt":"2006-12-11T17:37:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2006\/12\/dance_boy.html"},"modified":"2006-12-11T09:37:20","modified_gmt":"2006-12-11T17:37:20","slug":"dance_boy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/12\/dance_boy.html","title":{"rendered":"Dance, Boy"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

“I honestly didn’t know what would happen. [But] we have exceeded expectations,” Fishkin said.<\/p>\n

The artists like the idea of offering their services for health care, he said.<\/p>\n

“They didn’t want to look like they’re getting charity,” he said.<\/p>\n

The Williamsburg hospital now fields up to 30 calls a week from artists who want to participate, he said.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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

“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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-class_war","category-consumer_issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1879\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}