A Musician's Take on The SIMS Foundation Service Pause
Posted Date: November 20 2024
Howdy Comrades,
My name is Stephen Savage. I'm a musician, a fellow member of our Local 433, and like many, I struggle with ADHD, Depression, and Anxiety. A few years ago, I sought out therapy and psychiatric help, and it was the single best decision of my life. After I made that decision, the SIMS Foundation helped me access mental healthcare. The care they connected me with was and is essential in helping me understand, live, and thrive as a person and as a musician.
Within the last month, SIMS recently dropped their support and assistance for Austin's Music community, giving us little to no time to adjust and leaving us with little to no path forward for continuity of care for the most vulnerable in our community. They also shuddered their physical location without warning this past summer, while minimizing emails and contact with us. While these actions are outrageous, SIMS seems uninterested in criticism of how these actions are recklessly endangering people's lives. Regardless, what do we do now, and how can we support each other?
If you or someone you know are in an immediate crisis, please call 911 or 512-472-4357 (the Mental Help Crisis Line) or go to the nearest emergency room.
After some digging and a lot of help from the good people at HAAM, I've gotten together some resources.
If you don't already know, the Health Alliance for Austin Musicians (HAAM) offers help navigating Healthcare.gov and Insurance premium assistance. When you sign up now through January 15th, Foundation Communities and HAAM can help you find an insurance plan that can make mental healthcare more accessible.
HAAM play a vital part in helping keep Austin musicians afloat and accessing healthcare. https://www.myhaam.org/
HAAM also has a list of local mental healthcare providers, helplines, and support groups on their website. https://www.myhaam.org/mental-wellness
Here's a direct link to their google doc.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-lbFkjTPbmACU7D-RMbYQEQqEMaoxoQsIcRbUAGZhug/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.knfhcgkfru61
(Personally, HAAM helped me figure out that right now my Carma Health Psychiatrist is covered under my current Sendero Plan, and for 2025, I'm switching over to an Aetna plan that covers him and my therapist.)
Here are some other organizations that help musicians access healthcare.
SofaBurn: https://www.sofaburninc.org/
Music Health Alliance: https://www.musichealthalliance.com/mental-health-care/
MusiCares: https://www.musicares.org/
MusiCaresRelief@MusiCares.org or 800-687-4227.
If you know people who need insurance and need help, Central Health has insurance premium assistance if you meet their income requirements. https://www.centralhealth.net/map/
Even though I've found these avenues of support, my mental healthcare costs alone were set to triple. I'm very lucky that I was able to find a compatible mental healthcare provider and insurance, so now my costs will only just increase by 50%. I sincerely hope that SIMS can get back to helping those of us who have relied on their life-saving services, but I'm taking the steps now to ensure that I have access to the care I and the people I care about need.
I hope these resources can help you navigate the current hellscape of US Healthcare. Reach out to me (via the union directory), to the Union Office, or HAAM if you need help, and lets us all work for a better world where mental healthcare is a guaranteed right to all.
- Stephen Savage -
If you know people who need insurance and need help, Central Health has insurance premium assistance if you meet their income requirements. https://www.centralhealth.net/map/
Even though I've found these avenues of support, my mental healthcare costs alone were set to triple. I'm very lucky that I was able to find a compatible mental healthcare provider and insurance, so now my costs will only just increase by 50%. I sincerely hope that SIMS can get back to helping those of us who have relied on their life-saving services, but I'm taking the steps now to ensure that I have access to the care I and the people I care about need.
I hope these resources can help you navigate the current hellscape of US Healthcare. Reach out to me (via the union directory), to the Union Office, or HAAM if you need help, and lets us all work for a better world where mental healthcare is a guaranteed right to all.
- Stephen Savage -
