Actor Drake Bell, most famous for his role on the Nickelodeon show Drake & Josh, publicly denounced SAG-AFTRA after the major Hollywood union said he failed to qualify for health insurance coverage.
Bell attacked the union in an Instagram Story shared on Tuesday wherein he shared a screenshot of the SAG-AFTRA health plan website that said he did “not qualify for Health Plan coverage at this time.”
“Your reported covered earnings from July 2025-June 2026 did not meet minimum eligibility requirements, or you did not qualify other eligibility rules.”
The page further said that Bell earned only $17,480.53, adding that he needs to reach the $28,933 threshold required for the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan.
“Do not become an actor. Do not join SAG. You can work for 35 years and they still say [middle finger emoji],” Bell wrote on the screenshot.
Bell then tagged the union and SAG-AFTRA president Sean Astin (Lord of the Rings).
“@SAGAFTRA really though @SeanAstin you’re doing a bang up job. How about stop using actors to run things maybe? They literally just know how to say words in front of a camera,” he said.
As Breitbart News reported in September, several actors in Hollywood have come forward to say they have been denied health insurance under the SAG-AFTRA union, including Jack Haven and Heather Matarazzo.
“I’m in a bit of an emergency situation,” Haven said in a YouTube. “I need to make $4,000 by the end of the month in order to qualify for SAG health insurance starting in January.”
Haven later said that he obtained the necessary work after his video went viral.
Heather Matarazzo said that many of her fellow actors face similar situations.
“I am literally in the same boat right now. Lots of my fellow actors are,” she wrote. “I remember a time when we didn’t have to earn a minimum to qualify for insurance. Glad to see that Jack has gotten an offer that will let them to qualify for 2027.”
As Breitbart News noted the time, the most recent “SAG-AFTRA union contract is not static at the $28,933 income level, either.”
“According to the agreement, actors will find the annual earning total rise by $900 a year all the way to 2030, meaning that by then actors will have to earn $32,533 every year thereafter before being qualified to enroll in the union’s healthcare plan,” it noted. “Union scale wages for speaking roles are currently as low as $256 a day for low-budget productions and $1,283 per day for productions carrying a $2 million budget or more.”