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Back in November, Bloomberg Businessweek featured a wonderful music festival produced by O+ that allowed musicians to barter for their health care:

A festival where uninsured artists and musicians exchange work for medical attention is attracting interest from organizers and physicians across the country looking to replicate the model.

A group of artists and physicians in the Hudson Valley conceived of the gathering. About 40 doctors, dentists, physical therapists, acupuncturists, and others donated 232 hours of service, valued at more than $38,000, to the bands and artists who played or created sculptures or paintings. "It really is about...helping artists and musicians who are contributing to society find health care at affordable rates," says Arthur Chandler, a doctor at Columbia Memorial Hospital in Hudson, N.Y., and an organizer of O+ (pronounced O-positive).

Chandler and other organizers are incorporating O+ as a nonprofit and want to put on art-for-health-care festivals in Kingston and other cities next year. Like-minded artists, musicians, and physicians from Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Nashville, Berkeley, and Lowell, Mass., have contacted O+ looking to replicate the model. "It seems like something that should be everywhere and could definitely be everywhere," says Julia Henderson, a 32-year-old writer and development coordinator at a San Francisco theater who hopes to bring O+ to Berkeley. A transplant from Brooklyn, Henderson says she hasn't had insurance for six years.

OK...it's not a solution to health care coverage, but it's still something:

Doctors, artists, and their advocates recognize the limits to the approach. "Bartering projects can be a great resource for a lot of people, but it's not a sustainable model," says Judilee Reed, executive director of artists' advocacy group Leveraging Investments in Creativity, which estimates that nearly two in five artists lack adequate insurance. Alexandra Marvar, an O+ organizer who performs with Russo in Common Prayer, agrees that O+ and similar programs can't replace insurance. But she says a series of such festivals around the country could at least offer "a Band-Aid solution to inaccessible health care."

Read on and support the fantastic new organization, O+! Musicians bartering for health care is spreading like cancer!

O+ Festival: Big Heart from O+ Festival on Vimeo.

The podcast of the article can be downloaded here.

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