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Thursday, May 6, 2010

News Brooklyn Hospital Offers Health Care in Exchange for Art

Posted by Jonny Diamond on Thu, May 6, 2010 at 11:23 AM

Clowns heal us all.

Hey, artist types, Bushwick's Woodhull Hospital (lovingly nicknamed "Woodhell" by Brooklynites terrified of ever having to go there) is offering a program called Artist Access, whereby one can offer artistic services (art exhibits, concerts, reading to children, dancing for seniors) in exchange for health credits, to the tune of $40 an hour. According to the article at Brokelyn, the variety of rewardable artistic contributions is fairly wide:

Actors have role-played to help young MDs learn to deliver bad news, and others have helped chemo-patients to self-sooth and meditate through the pain. Photographers will soon be able to take pictures of newborns so parents will have some professionally-crafted memories from day-one.

And while $40 doesn't seem like much in the face of wildly inflated hospital costs, if you think about it as reading to kids twice a week, for an hour, that $320 a month in health care help doesn't look so bad, does it? To qualify for the program, you have to be earning less than what your average school teacher makes.

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Tags: Woodhull Hospital, Artist Access, health insurance, poor America, Woodhell