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In April, actress Miki Yamashita said she received a health diagnosis requiring surgery to remove non-cancerous tumors. It was at this moment that the interpreter, who appeared in Cobra Kai and voiced a character on The Lion Guardhas started the race to try to qualify for her union’s health insurance plan by June 30. If she has earned enough on eligible projects or worked enough days by then, she could be covered by the plan at the end of the year, when she says she needs the medical procedure.
But meeting the plan’s requirements was going to be tougher than usual. For nearly four months of his eligibility period, his union, SAG-AFTRA, was on strike against film and television companies, and Yamashita was barred by union rules from working on many projects. In the months that followed, production didn’t fully resume in the Los Angeles area as the entertainment industry continued to contract. As of mid-June, Yamashita — who says he had been on the union’s health plan intermittently throughout his career and had sometimes obtained different coverage through outside jobs — was still about $12,000 below the required income threshold. (As a performer focused on lead acting work, she says it’s less realistic for her to meet the alternative requirement of a specific number of days worked. Yamashita, who is an elected union delegate, spoke on her own behalf, not on behalf of SAG-AFTRA.) “Barring a miracle, I doubt I’ll actually reach the threshold by (June) 30,” she says. “I’ll keep pushing until that deadline comes,” at which point she’ll evaluate other health insurance options.
More than six months after Hollywood’s historic double strike officially ended, other writers and actors find themselves in a similar situation. SAG-AFTRA performers generally must earn at least $27,000 in covered income or work at least 104 days in 12 months to qualify for health insurance coverage starting in 2024. (In 2023, before the SAG-AFTRA strike, only about 25,000 union members out of about 160,000 met those requirements.) Members of the Writers Guild of America, meanwhile, must earn $43,862 in covered income over four quarters to qualify for the Writers Guild-Industry Health Fund; starting July 1, they must earn $45,397.
Certainly, health plans offer some leniency to participants after the months of strike action. The Writers Guild-Industry Health Fund and the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan, which operate separately from their affiliated unions and are managed by directors from both union and management, offer one-quarter health coverage extensions if union members meet certain conditions.
The extensions have helped secure additional time, but they haven’t been a silver bullet for some members, as the Writers Guild of America West acknowledged in a statement that placed the blame on Hollywood management. “Studio decisions over the past several years have disrupted employment in the industry, reduced the number of projects developed and produced, and led to two strikes. The Guild cares deeply about writers who are losing their health care coverage and will continue to fight for quality health care for writers and work with organizations like the Entertainment Community Fund to ensure access when Guild coverage expires,” the Guild said.
In the meantime, creatives of all levels are scrambling to meet the demands. Tracker And Waffles + Mochi Writer David Radcliff is $5,000 away from requalifying for the Writers Guild’s Industry Health Fund. After receiving an extension of coverage, he must make up the shortfall by Sept. 30. Radcliff, who has cerebral palsy, says, “For someone who uses a wheelchair and crutches and has a chronic illness, having insurance, especially solid insurance like the Writers Guild offers, provides a sense of security and stability.” He says he tries not to be “too optimistic or too pessimistic” as he considers requalifying this fall.
William Sadler, a veteran performer who has played roles in Hawaii five-0, The Shawshank Redemption And Die Hard 2has been a SAG-AFTRA member since 1977 and doesn’t recall having trouble qualifying for union health insurance in years past. A year ago, he said, his wife was diagnosed with lung cancer, and he has since turned down her job because of a desire to spend time with her in their southeastern New York home. Meanwhile, there were fewer choices during his qualifying period because of the strikes.
Sadler says he’s trying to reach his income threshold by Sept. 30 without spending long periods away from his wife, who is also on the plan. “It’s a terrible situation at the best of times, but it’s made worse by the fact that I really feel like I’m under pressure to find a job that meets that requirement,” he says. “This is not the time to be without health insurance.” For now, Sadler says he’s considering taking a quick job in Los Angeles that would normally be hired by a local and he would pay for his own travel and stay there.
Chelsea Schwartz, SAG-AFTRA member (Rebel Moon (parts one and two) has been a union member for nearly a decade and has been on her health insurance plan for most of that time, doing fill-ins and background work. She lost her SAG-AFTRA insurance in early 2024, which she says happened because of the decline in work during the actors’ and writers’ strikes. Now, she’s trying to work 65 more days by September 30. That’s been difficult in the context of Hollywood’s continued contraction: “This is the slowest I’ve ever seen my industry. I probably submit at least a hundred posts a week,[and]I think I average about four days on set a month.”
A veteran SAG-AFTRA actress who declined to be named but is starring in a summer movie is also at risk of losing her insurance and must meet her earnings threshold by June 30. “For a certain profile, it doesn’t feel good to have to say to your agents, ‘Hey, can you get me a guest spot on anything that happens to someone my age because otherwise I’m going to lose my health insurance?’ It shouldn’t be like that,” she said.
The situation has not gone unnoticed by casting directors, who in some cases work to help actors meet their qualifying thresholds. Casting director Tineka Becker (The mysterious Benedict Society, Heist) says the casting community has a few private Facebook groups where “over the last four years, (there has been) a very obvious and concerted effort to share information about actors who are at risk of losing their health insurance and to really try to help solve the problem by trying to find them roles.”
Actors and writers are also revealing their struggles to qualify on social media. Yamashita posted a video on May 10 asking for help finding work; it was shared and liked by thousands of people on the X platform alone. Since then, she has been “working pretty steadily,” she says. “I have been incredibly touched and blessed by this outpouring of goodwill.”
The writer Carlos Cisco (Star Trek: Discovery, East Los High) is another worker who disclosed his health insurance situation on X — in his case, he’s set to lose his coverage after June 30. He says his “ship has sailed” now by re-qualifying for the health insurance plan before it expired, and he applied for Medi-Cal.
Overall, the decision to go public wasn’t a difficult one for Cisco. He was inspired by seeing another writer do the same. “If there’s one thing we’ve all learned from the strike, it’s that we need to talk openly about our issues with each other,” he says. “More often than not, we share the same issues and we’re not as isolated as we think we are.”