Nonprofits Are Helping Musicians Pay for Insurance in Austin, Texas, and Beyond

AUSTIN, Texas — Musician Zack Morgan jokes that when he lost his corporate job in 2015, it was like being pushed off a cliff. For years, he said, he’d been playing both sides of the Austin coin: tech worker by day, funk keyboardist by night. “Maybe this is my sign to try the full-time music thing,” Morgan recalled thinking. “Step one in that was: Get health insurance again.” Austin bills itself as “the Live Music Capital of the World,” but it can be unaffordable for the artists who provide the city with its cultural cachet — and help drive its tourism revenue. Morgan has supported himself by patching together gigs with a number of bands. To help pay for health insurance, he turned to a local nonprofit, the Health Alliance for Austin Musicians, or HAAM. “That’s part of being able to make this whole thing work,” Morgan said. HAAM subsidizes the monthly insurance premiums of local musicians who purchase plans through the Affordable Care Act marketplace. To fund the roughly $4 million program, it works with Central Health, a public agency that provides healthcare resources for low-income residents of Austin and surrounding Travis County. Many of the performing artists pay $0 toward mon...