Hollywood screenwriters and actors fight for health insurance after strikes

THR Illustration

In April, actress Miki Yamashita received a diagnosis that requires surgery to remove non-cancerous tumors. At the time, the actress, who starred in Cobra Kai and lent her voice to a character on The Lion Guardbegan trying to qualify for her union’s health insurance plan by June 30. If she earns enough by then on eligible projects or has a sufficient number of days of work, she could be covered by the plan by the end of the year, when she says she will have to undergo the medical procedure.

But meeting the plan’s requirements proved more difficult than usual. Nearly four months into her wait, her union, SAG-AFTRA, went on strike against film and television companies, and Yamashita was barred from working on many projects because of union rules. In the months that followed, production in the Los Angeles area did not fully recover as the entertainment business continued to experience a downturn. As of mid-June, Yamashita — who says she has been covered by the union’s health insurance on and off throughout her career, sometimes getting other coverage through side jobs — was still about $12,000 under the required earnings threshold. (As a performer who focuses on leading roles, she says meeting the alternative requirement of a certain number of days of work is less realistic. Yamashita, who is an elected delegate for the union, spoke on her own behalf, not on behalf of SAG-AFTRA.) “Unless a miracle happens, I doubt I’ll actually meet the threshold by June 30,” she says. “I will continue to work hard until the deadline passes,” and after that she will explore other health insurance options.

More than half a year after Hollywood’s historic double strike officially ended, other writers and actors are in a similar situation. SAG-AFTRA performers typically must earn at least $27,000 in covered earnings or work at least 104 days over the course of 12 months to qualify for health insurance starting in 2024. (As of 2023, before the SAG-AFTRA strike, only about 25,000 of about 160,000 union members met those requirements.) Members of the Writers Guild of America, meanwhile, must earn $43,862 in covered earnings over four quarters to qualify for the Writers Guild-Industry Health Fund; starting July 1, they must earn $45,397.

Health insurance companies are certainly offering their members some leniency after months of strikes. The Writers Guild-Industry Health Fund and the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan, which operate independently of their affiliated unions and are managed by trustees representing both workers and employers, offer a quarterly extension of health insurance if union members meet certain requirements.

While these extensions have bought additional time, they have not been a panacea for some members, the Writers Guild of America West acknowledged in a statement that placed the blame on Hollywood management. “Studios’ decisions over the past few years have disrupted employment in the industry: reducing the number of projects developed and produced and forcing two strikes. The Guild cares deeply about writers losing 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 the Guild’s coverage expires,” the Guild stated.

In the meantime, creatives at all levels are striving to meet the demands. tracker And Waffles + Mochi Writer David Radcliff is $5,000 short of requalifying for the Writers Guild-Industry Health Fund. After receiving an extension of coverage, he has until Sept. 30 to make up his earnings gap. Radcliff, who has cerebral palsy, says, “For someone who uses a wheelchair and crutches and has a lifelong condition, having insurance, especially strong insurance like the Writers Guild’s, gives a sense of security and stability.” He says he tries not to be “too optimistic or too pessimistic” when thinking about whether he might requalify in the fall.

William Sadler, an experienced actor who played roles in Hawaii Five-0, The Convicts And Die Hard 2has been a member of SAG-AFTRA since 1977 and can’t recall ever having trouble qualifying for union health insurance in recent years. A year ago, he says, his wife was diagnosed with lung cancer, and he has turned down jobs since then because he wanted to spend time with her at their home in southeastern New York. Because of the strikes, there were fewer choices during his qualifying period.

Sadler says he’s trying to meet his earnings threshold by Sept. 30 without being away from his wife, who also has insurance for a long time. “It’s a terrible situation under the best of circumstances, 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 no time to be without health insurance.” For now, Sadler says, he plans to take a short-term job in Los Angeles for which he would normally have a local employer and pay for the travel and stay himself.

SAG-AFTRA member Chelsea Schwartz (Rebel Moon Parts One and Two) has been a member of the union for nearly a decade, and has had health insurance for most of that time, where she worked as a temp and extra. She lost her SAG-AFTRA insurance in early 2024, which she said was due to the loss of work during the actors’ and writers’ strikes. Now she’s trying to work 65 more days by Sept. 30. That’s difficult given the ongoing recession in Hollywood: “I’ve never seen my industry this slow. I probably apply for at least a hundred job postings a week, (and) I think I spend an average of four days a month on set.”

A veteran SAG-AFTRA actress who asked to remain anonymous but is starring in a summer movie is also at risk of losing her insurance and must meet her earnings threshold by June 30. “When you’re an actor with a certain profile, it doesn’t feel good to have to say to your agents, ‘Hey, can you get me a cameo in some movie that has someone my age in it because otherwise I’m going to lose my health insurance?’ It shouldn’t be that way,” she says.

The situation has not gone unnoticed by casting directors. In some cases, they are working to help actors reach their qualification thresholds. Casting director Tineka Becker (The mysterious Benedict Society, robbery) says there are some private Facebook groups in the casting community where there has been “a very obvious and concerted effort over the last four years to share information about actors who are at risk of losing their health insurance and to actually try to solve the problem by trying to find roles for them.”

Actors and writers are also taking to social media to announce their qualification problems. Yamashita posted a video on May 10 asking for help in finding a job; the video was shared and liked by thousands on the platform alone. Since then, she has been “working fairly regularly,” she says. “I am incredibly touched and blessed by this wave of goodwill.”

The author Carlos Cisco (Star Trek: Discovery, East Los High) is another worker who disclosed his health insurance situation on X—in his case, he will lose his coverage after June 30. He says his “train has now left” to re-qualify before his health insurance expires, and he has applied for Medi-Cal.

Overall, the decision to go public was not a difficult one for Cisco. He was inspired when he saw another author doing the same. “If there is one thing we all learned from the strike, it is that we need to talk openly with each other about our problems,” he says. “Most of the time, we have the same problems and are not as isolated as we think.”