Me and the ACA Q: How do you make a million bucks in the music biz? A: Start with 2 million and work your way down! Ba da bing.. Just like sports and Hollywood, music has a handful of elite performers making megabucks on top with a huge industry built around them. And uncountable numbers of people subsisting on a pittance chasing their dreams on the plains below Mount Olympus. Ive always known this, and I have never had any illusions that I would become rich making music or wearing my audio engineer hat in a small town. But Ive had an amazing, rewarding life doing it with someone I love in a beautiful place filled with great people, which is all I ever wanted. However, this has meant some very lean times, sleeping in back of the studio on a bed made of plywood on milk crates, cooking on a hotplate... that sort of thing. Which means that I never could afford health insurance. Any health issues that came up were dealt with by cash and understanding doctors, though Im fortunate in that Ive been very healthy. But the last years have seen health costs spiral so far out of control that it would be a major blow to go to the emergency room, let alone being airlifted. So I was extremely relieved when the ACA was passed, and I could afford to buy health insurance. At the time, I joked with Melody and said “now that I have insurance, Im gonna need it!” Turns out I was right. As far as health problems go, this is minor in the 21st century... I have a torn meniscus, and it will be repaired by arthroscopic surgery. But last year at this time I would have been looking at getting it done in Costa Rica, or some other country. Thanks to the ACA, I get to do it in my home town. There are people that begrudge me this, saying that since I have a low income rate that Im getting a handout... other people are picking up the tab. This is unbelievably false. Income tax is just a part of where the Federal government gets its money, and not even the biggest. Import tax is huge, so almost everything we buy (almost nothing is made in America), including much of the food, is heavily taxed, some more than once. Gasoline, automobiles, electricity, water, sewage, telephone, clothing, cable TV, liquor and cigarettes, (big bucks there)... there is little that is NOT taxed. In addition to my income tax payments, I have paid a huge amount of money into the Federal government coffers just by being alive. I am spending my own money on myself.
Posted on: Sun, 03 Aug 2014 18:40:04 +0000
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