Bloomberg Businessweek Takes NO+te

Bartering Art for Health Care

By John Tozzi | November 18, 2010

A festival where uninsured artists and musicians exchange work for medical attention is attracting interest from organizers and physicians across the country looking to replicate the model

Jason Russo, a 37-year-old singer and guitarist from Brooklyn, hasn’t had consistent health care since he was a teenager. In October he saw a doctor—though in an unconventional setting: a gig in Kingston, N.Y., 90 miles north of New York City. Russo was one of 70 musicians and artists who bartered their creative services for medical care at an event called the O+ Festival. “It was kind of an amazing thing to sit down with a regular doctor,” he says. “Doctors are humans, it turns out. They enjoy rock music and art.”

A group of artists and physicians in the Hudson Valley conceived of the gathering. About 40 doctors, dentists, physical therapists, acupuncturists, and others donated 232 hours of service, valued at more than $38,000, to the bands and artists who played or created sculptures or paintings. “It really is about … helping artists and musicians who are contributing to society find health care at affordable rates,” says Arthur Chandler, a doctor at Columbia Memorial Hospital in Hudson, N.Y., and an organizer of O+ (pronounced O-positive). Read more in Bloomberg Businessweek