Inside the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan's Earnings Threshold, and Why So Few Qualify

SAG-AFTRA members, including the working voice actors among its roughly 160,000 members, are covered by a health plan that is genuinely generous by American standards: low premiums relative to comparable individual coverage, strong benefits, and a reputation, when it works, as one of the best perks of union membership in entertainment. The part that rarely makes it into recruitment conversations is how few members, in a given plan year, actually earn enough covered work to qualify for it at all.

SAG-AFTRA's own chief economist, David Viviano, put a number on that gap in 2023: at the plan's then-current earnings threshold of $26,470 a year, only about 14 percent of SAG-AFTRA members earned enough covered work to qualify for the health plan in a typical year. Only 7 percent earned $80,000 a year or more. Those figures were reported during the union's 2023 contract fight, when actor pay and healthcare access became central, public issues for the first time in years, and they describe a structural reality of the plan rather than a one-time crisis: most working union performers, most years, simply do not clear the bar.

This is not a plan that fails because it is poorly run. It is a plan built around a real design tension in entertainment work generally: coverage funded by employer contributions tied to earnings, in an industry where the median working performer's income is thin and irregular, produces exactly this outcome almost by construction. The threshold has to sit somewhere, and wherever it sits, a large share of a union built on irregular, project-based work will land under it in any given year.

How the Threshold Actually Bites

"I have had so many periods of food insecurity and no health insurance, and that's really hard when you have a chronic disease or chronic illness like I do."

Brooks' account describes the specific mechanism that makes this threshold so punishing compared to a typical job-based insurance cliff: a member can be actively working, auditioning constantly, and still fall short of the earnings bar in a lean year, then lose coverage entirely rather than seeing it simply reduced. There is no partial plan for someone who earns close to but under the threshold. It is qualified or not qualified, full stop, which turns an ordinary slow year in an already irregular career into a health coverage crisis on top of an income one.

The 2020 Restructuring and Its Aftermath

The plan's financial pressures came to a head publicly in 2020, when its trustees raised the earnings floor effective January 2021 to address a projected deficit, reported at the time as a $141 million loss for 2020 and $83 million projected for 2021, with plan reserves projected to run out by 2024 without changes. Reporting from that period put the number of participants projected to lose coverage as a direct result at roughly 3,500, with more than 2,800 dependents affected alongside them. Older, veteran performers were disproportionately affected, and a group of them, including the late actor Ed Asner, brought a class-action lawsuit alleging the changes discriminated against them by age. SAG-AFTRA's Health Plan agreed in 2023 to pay $15 million to resolve that case.

The union did build in some relief during acute periods: performers who earned at least $22,000 before the 2023 strike began were allowed to retain coverage through the end of that year despite falling short of the normal threshold once the strike froze most production. That kind of one-time accommodation is a reasonable emergency response, and it also underlines the underlying point: the plan's administrators know the threshold routinely leaves working members short, and they have had to build ad hoc bridges for exactly that reason more than once.

Voice Actors Are Covered by the Same Rules, With Less Public Attention

Almost none of the public reporting on this issue names a voice actor specifically; the coverage of the eligibility crisis has understandably centered on on-camera performers, whose strike-era stories dominated entertainment press in 2023 and 2024. That is a gap in the public record, not evidence that voice actors are somehow exempt. Voice performers earn toward the same Health Plan eligibility as any other SAG-AFTRA member, through the same covered-earnings mechanism, and the structural problem, thin median income across a large, irregularly-working membership, applies to voice work at least as much as to on-camera work, arguably more, given how much of the voice-over market sits outside union coverage entirely in the first place.

"This is the slowest that I have ever witnessed my industry to be. I probably submit to at least a hundred postings a week, and I think I'm averaging four days on set per month."

Schwartz was describing on-camera background and stand-in work specifically, but the pattern, high submission volume against thin actual bookings, describes a great deal of union voice-over work just as accurately. A hundred submissions producing four booked days is not a personal failure; it is closer to the ordinary math of a competitive, oversubscribed performance field, and it is exactly the math that keeps a large share of a union's own working membership under its health plan's earnings floor most years.

What This Means for Your Own Coverage Planning

The practical takeaway for any voice actor, union member or not, is not to distrust the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan, which remains a real and valuable benefit for the members who do clear the threshold in a given year. It is to plan health coverage the way you would plan for any other income source with a real chance of falling short in a lean year: with a backup, not a single point of failure. Freelance health insurance options for voice actors covers the marketplace alternative that many working performers, union and non-union alike, end up leaning on during exactly the years the union threshold is not met.

It is also worth going into a membership decision, discussed in more general terms in our guide to SAG-AFTRA membership basics, with this specific number in mind rather than an assumption that health coverage simply comes bundled with the union card. For most members in most years, historically, it has not.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the current earnings threshold to qualify?

It rises most years and the exact current figure is best confirmed directly on SAG-AFTRA Plans' own eligibility page rather than from any article, including this one, since the number reported here ($26,470) reflects 2023 and has since increased. Treat any specific dollar figure in secondhand reporting as a snapshot in time, not a current rate.

Does the health plan crisis mean membership is not worth it?

Not on its own. The health plan is one of several benefits and protections membership provides, discussed more broadly in our membership basics guide, and the right decision depends on your realistic booking mix, not on the health plan eligibility rate alone. It does mean the health plan specifically should not be the deciding factor in a membership decision unless your covered-earnings trajectory clearly supports clearing the threshold most years.

Does any of this affect non-union voice actors?

Only indirectly, as a caution against assuming any single source, union or otherwise, will reliably cover your healthcare needs every year. Non-union voice actors were never eligible for this specific plan, and the marketplace and other independent options discussed in our freelance health insurance guide are the relevant path regardless of this plan's own threshold trends.

Sources and Further Reading

• Rolling Stone, Most SAG Actors Don't Even Make A Living Wage. Here Are Their Stories (August 4, 2023): the 14% qualification rate and $26,470 threshold, attributed to SAG-AFTRA chief economist David Viviano; the J. Nicole Brooks quote.
• The Hollywood Reporter, Writers and Actors Scramble to Keep Their Health Insurance in a Post-Strike Hollywood, Katie Kilkenny (June 29, 2024): the Chelsea Schwartz quote.
• Deadline, Hard Choices To Save SAG-AFTRA's Troubled Health Plan (August 2020): the 2020 restructuring, projected deficits, and coverage losses.
• Variety, SAG-AFTRA Health Plan to Pay $15 Million to Resolve Ed Asner's Class Action Lawsuit (2023).
• NPR/OPB, Hollywood union health insurance is particularly good. And it's jeopardized by strike (August 30, 2023): the strike-period coverage extension for members earning at least $22,000.
• AFL-CIO, Get to Know AFL-CIO's Affiliates: SAG-AFTRA (September 22, 2025): current membership figures.
• SAG-AFTRA Plans, Earned Eligibility: the official, current eligibility mechanism; check this page directly for the current year's threshold.