10 Questions with ... Tatum Allsep

BRIEF CAREER SYNOPSIS:

In 2006, Tatum Allsep began to take notes on the music industry's dire need for healthcare support. At the time, she was working with Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Kix Brooks of Brooks & Dunn, and the Country Music Association (CMA) to co-found the for-profit company, Sound Healthcare. Eventually stepping away from her position at Sound Healthcare, Allsep began to develop what is now known as the non-profit, Music Health Alliance (MHA), which launched to the public in January 2013. According to its website, MHA has now served well-over 8,000 music industry professionals and their families, along with securing over $30 million in healthcare cost reductions to Heal The Music. As a Vanderbilt graduate and 22-year music industry vet, Allsep's career includes time at MCA Records, artist management for The Derailers, and the launch of the Vanderbilt Medical Center/Children's Hospital Music Industry Relations Department. Additionally, she has helped lead several programs such as Dierks Bentley's "Miles And Music For Kids," Project Paper Doll, Musicians On Call, and CMA Sound Healthcare. Tatum chatted with All Access Nashville in this week's "10 Questions" feature about MHA's mission and purpose, as well as how everyone can get involved - whether you are an industry person in search of healthcare or looking to donate to the cause.

1. Tatum, thanks for answering "10 Questions." I'm aware that for Music Health Alliance, a lot of your mission is getting people to A) understand that you exist and B) understand what you do. This Q&A will hopefully assist with option A, so talk about option B. Can you briefly describe MHA's purpose?

Our purpose is to create access to healthcare, as well as find solutions to healthcare needs for the music industry, because most of our industry is self-employed or part of a small business, so we don't have HR departments or group health benefits. So, health literacy, solutions to health crisis management, and care coordination.

2. Let's back up for a moment. Share your industry background, and what led you to this role?

In 1995, I started as an intern for MCA Records. I got that internship because I left the "L" out of "excellent public speaking skills," so it read "excellent pubic speaking skills." So, Phil Hart in the MCA Marketing department thought that was awesome and made an intern position, and that opened the door, so I stayed at MCA Records for a decade. Then, I went into artist management and had twins three months early. I had health insurance and a maternity rider, so I left the hospital with a half a million-dollar bill. I learned that was not an isolated incident - that it was happening all over the industry, because there was no federal regulation at that point. So, insurance plans were real shiny on the frontend and had no guts on the backend. If there was a health crisis, there was just no coverage or there were limits, which was my case. They would cover one doctor, and I needed three. It would cover one surgical assistant, and I had five. That kind of thing. So, that's where the seed was kind of planted and to learn how to help our industry. Fast forward to what I learned very quickly; to really be objective, you must remove the profit incentive, which is a horrible business plan, and bring insurance into the occasion. Because you wouldn't go to the grocery store without your wallet, it's not a good idea to go to the hospital without a way to pay for your healthcare. By removing the profit motive and figuring out how to bring insurance into the equation and simplify the healthcare system, we found a template that really works for our creative community. I came to Vanderbilt and really wanted to be a doctor; my granddad had been a doctor; my brother was going to medical school. I hated math and science, and I was doing a masters program in nursing, and I had to do an internship, and I thought, "I know a little about medicine, I wanna learn about the music business," and I discovered my tribe. It was like an industry of misfits and the ability to heal masses without math and science, and I really felt like I had found my home. Nobody cared where you're from or if you had your mom or dad's credit card. They cared [about] how hard you worked and how smart you worked, and it made a lot of sense to me.

3. Talk a bit about healthcare, or lack thereof, for the musician community. They've traditionally had to find their own provider, correct?

When you've got epithetic income like our industry - touring with one person part of the year, being a session player, playing a lot of places - there's not that one, consistent HR department or any way to help guide through something that's become really complicated. So, we just don't deal with it. Our mode of management in the music business has been to pass the bucket and operate out of crisis management instead of prevention and wellness. When the Affordable Care Act happened, it created a way for self-employed people to get health insurance, but it became so complicated, that you'd get it, and you didn't know what doctors or hospitals to use, and you didn't even know what that meant. In the creative right brain, again, it got easier, but then it got harder. So, we try to drill that way down, and we do, and we simplify that whole process for people that have group insurance or don't. Now, we kind of work with everybody to get them access.

4, And, let's be clear: this is not just a Nashville-centric service. You've helped 8,400 members of the music community nationwide. How would somebody in - say, Wisconsin - get help?

Call us. Go to our website and send us a note. There's always a red button on our website that says, "get help now." Click it. You can put in your information if you don't feel like you're ready to make a phone call, and we'll call you right back. Every case is different, but there's a thread that connects all of us, and that is that we have a problem, and we need a solution. What we do is listen, and we connect the dots. If you're in Wisconsin, and you've got a $1.2 million medical bill, because you have a traumatic brain injury, and you have no idea what to do, we can start there. Or, if you're in Wisconsin, and you're 26, and you just rotated off your parents' insurance plan, and you're not sure what to do, we can start there. We will meet you wherever you are; we don't have a solution to try to shove everybody in to. We find a solution that fits your specific healthcare need.

5. Also, we're not talking about Country music here. This is all genres of music you are aiding.

Honest to goodness, I started this in my bedroom in the middle of the night. Immediately, it became clear that this was bigger than Nashville. But, even now, about 79% of our clients are in Nashville, Kentucky, Georgia, and the surrounding states. This is where our network started. Immediately, people that we were helping would come to us and say, "Hey, I have a friend in LA, would you mind helping him," and that's how we decided out of the gate that this has to be bigger than Nashville. The template that we go through and the federal laws are the same. The federal laws are really some of our greatest resources, because the law is the law is the law.

6. The stats on money saved by MHA is amazing -- $33 million. Tell us how?

It sounds like Monopoly money, but it's real money. If we didn't help negotiate that down, it would have had to come from somewhere, which is why medical bills are the cause of bankruptcy in the U.S. Our staff is all from the music industry, and this is an area we're all passionate about, because this is our family, so we have become trained and licensed in health insurance - not to sell anything, but to understand it and understand the law. What we will do is if somebody does have an $800,000 medical bill, and they make $12,000 a year, we will go in and negotiate that done. We work with all the foundation resources like MusiCares, the Opry Trust Fund, and ACM Lifting Lives to make their money go farther while a $10,000 grant won't go very far for a medical bill usually; it will go really far when you're talking about mortgage and utilities. We work with all those organizations to make their money go farther, and we also help find ways to offset the cost of health insurance, whether it's a federal program or a state program or just getting subsidies through Healthcare.gov - all of these different things are what lead up to that giant number. What drives that up the most is really negotiating down medical bills and fighting for our clients, especially in small towns, where in Sandersville, Georgia, they're getting $4 million of federal money a year at the hospital and don't even have a publicly displayed charity care policy. They tell people they don't have charity care, which is against the law. So, we can hold their feet to the fire.

7. Speaking of your staff, you have an incredible one, including Shelia Shipley Biddy. She must be an instrumental part of your organization because of her legendary status in the music industry in Nashville. Can you talk about her contribution to MHA?

First, I can't say enough about her as a mentor and a human being. There would not be the Music Health Alliance today without Shelia Shipley Biddy. She laminates her thoughts. She doesn't even have fingerprints anymore, because she's typed so much in her lifetime, tracking and creating. While I can have big ideas, she comes in and figures out how to get 'er done. The foundation that we still operate on and the radio promotion, Shelia built most of that, along with the systems we use. So, she brought that same tenacity and knowledge into navigating healthcare. She's helped build a system for us to track trends - same things she did with radio. We're not tracking #1 records, we're tracking health statuses, money spent in different states, and where we've got pockets of cancer or heart disease. It's phenomenal how her brain works. Her love for this industry and the respect industry has for her... I could walk into the CMA Board, and they would look at me like I have two heads, but when Shelia walks in, everybody sits up straight and pays attention. She has built that for over 40 years of hard work in our industry.

8. You have two big events coming up this week, titled "Medicare! What Now" and "What The Health." Can you talk about both and how people find out how to attend?

Let's talk about "Medicare" first, because that's running now through [Friday] December 7th, and that is the time of year where if you have Medicare, you can make changes during that time, or if you're coming up on the age of 65, you can sign up at that time. When you get close to 60, you will start to get more mail and sales pitches that you even know what to do with. All Medicare plans are not the same; there's a huge sales force in the Medicare work, because there are a lot of commissions tied to the Medicare world. For a senior person, or someone entering their legacy years, it is really important to understand the facts, and the facts are really confusing, even on the Medicare website. Shelia has become a certified senior advocate, and she's got nothing to sell. She is there because this is her family, and she wants everybody to understand the difference between a Medicare supplemental plan and a Medicare advantage plan and what hospitals to use. If you're Summering in Wisconsin, but Wintering in Florida, there's a specific kind of plan that's going to work for you, or if you take a certain medication, and you need to know how that's going to be covered, she drills all of that down so that it's so easy to navigate and so you can't be taken advantage of. Also, you'll understand how to navigate the healthcare system if you need it. So, she simplifies that process. On the other side of that, "What The Health," we do the same thing for health insurance and access to healthcare. So, we take this complicated system of health insurance in the individual world. If you have a group health insurance plan or work for a big company, this would not be the seminar for you; this is for people who are self-employed or part of a small business. We drill it way down and help you understand the networks - how it works, why it works, and what you need - with three basic questions: what's your budget, where are the doctors you want to see, and what are the options out there? And, by the time you leave, you'll know for this year what's gonna be best for you.

9. Also this year, you announced a partnership with the Ben Eyestone Fund and St. Thomas Health. Can you talk about that and what it will provide?

Ben Eyestone was a drummer from the Eastside of Nashville; he was part of the Rock and Americana world and beloved. He's 28 years old. He had just rotated off his parents' insurance plan and thought he made too much to get an open insurance plan. Long story short, he really needed a colonoscopy, and he couldn't get one. The only place offering free colonoscopies at the time - he had abdominal pain in April, and they couldn't book one until August 31st, and he died of a perforated intestine from a tumor that was growing aggressively. [He died] July 12th, 2017. Had he had a colonoscopy - $1,200 is what that would have cost - in April, he would have had a fighting chance. We believe he died a very preventative death. I get choked up talking about it, because I have 16-year-old twin boys, and I could not imagine. This is a kid who always filed his taxes and did everything right, and our system truly failed him. When he would go to the ER, doubling over in pain, they would treat him as an Opioid addict, because he had long hair and tattoos, and the guy had never taken an Opioid in his life. So, we didn't know about them; he had called us the last week of June, because he had some medical bills he wanted help with, and he missed his appointment, so we called to check on him. We didn't even know anything was wrong, and his mom picked up the phone and said that he had passed away that day. So, we sat down with her the next week, and asked what happened and how we could help. Looking at his story, we realized so quickly that we had heard it over and over again - that there's such a deficit in access for a lower income, uninsured musician, which is still what I call the greatest pre-existing condition that still exists, because your dignity is just ripped to shreds by trying to get access to something you know you need. So, his family had some money left from his GoFundMe account, and we said we'd match it to figure out a way to create access that likely would have saved Ben's life. So, we put together the Ben Eyestone Fund, and we raised $25,000. St. Thomas matched it, and then Dierks Bentley contributed a big chunk, and now we have $75,000, and that's kind of where we wanna keep the fund. Anyone who makes a living in the music industry who is uninsured and whose income falls below 300% above the federal poverty level. Now, that's a mouthful, but that's about $35,000 a year after work deductions. So, it covers a lot of ground in the music industry. The reason we picked that number is that if you quality for the Ben Eyestone Fund - you have the have the history in the music industry and make below that amount - we will help you get all the diagnostic testing you need. If you know something's wrong, there's no reason you should not have access to care. And, if something is wrong, because your income is below that amount, you also qualify for financial assistance at hospitals and from a lot of doctors to help you get the care you need. So far, there have been eight lives since March saved - one with testicular cancer, one with an esophagus that was closing, one with tumors in the young woman's uterus that could have all been misdiagnosed. Then, we have about 18 clients that were treated and released - they didn't find a need for their treatment, and none of them had medical debt, and all of them have been treated from the Ben Eyestone Fund. It is remarkable how a little bit of money can go so far, all in Ben's name. For his family and his friends, it's a way to bring some meaning to such a senseless and preventative death.

10. If I'm a working musician now, what advice can you give me about healthcare down the road, when I may be working and earning less?

First, listen to your gut. We call that God's whisper. If your gut is telling you something is wrong, it probably is. Do not let cost prohibit you from getting care. Call us; we will help you navigate. It's always confidential, and it's always free. You do not have to do it on your own - that's what we're here for. Use your gut as your best guide and really investigate it. Our services are free, and that is because we have such incredible support from the music industry. If anyone in radio who reads your column that is looking for a year-end guest or non-profit to support, we hope we'll be in the equation and that they think of us.