18/09/2009
Set the Artist Free
If you are a musician, I encourage you to join.
I know that many times, particularly for indie rock folks who are even more unlikely to have a steady paying gig than some of the jazz folks, the notion of health care is either completely non-existent or tied to a day job you’re hoping to quit or put put on hold to focus on music full time (thus losing coverage all together).
While a lot of people would have you believe that a public option or really any reform of the current system would put an undue burden on small business people — I really think they are missing the boat completely. A public option has the potential to reinvigorate our national creativity and entrepreneurialism.
There are many people tied to grey cubicles, shitty restaurant gigs, and manual labor of every possible description that have a great talent, a creative spark or even a new business idea waiting between their ears or shaking in their bored hands. Many of these people could get by on the work they love, but they return to that soul crushing job each and every day because they need the health insurance.
I’d love to live in a world where we have a concert for a sick musician to show our support, not to raise money to help them avoid being crippled by debt should they survive the disease they are trying to fight.
There will be consequences — should we have a public option, a few more people would try to open a shitty restaurant, take their woefully unprepared band on tour or share their tacky watercolors with the art fair circuit. And the teabaggers will have some fuel for their war on the “wellfare” state — politics is cyclical y’all, what ya’ gonna do?
But then again, some closet genius might quit Microsoft or Google to start the next Microsoft or Google. That bar band you love might get a little more committed and produce the great album you always suspected they could. I’m also sure some will fail and slink back to a traditional job because they can’t pay their cable or afford the new iPhone — but at least they won’t choose the day job because they are afraid of getting sick or in an accident.
A lot of opponents to health care reform cast their arguments in the light of liberty and freedom — suggesting that an oppressive government wants to shackle them with more tax or somehow limit their ability to choose the manner of care. I’d suggest freedom of choice is much more limited without a public option.
What if you could choose to change your job at anytime? Or move to a new city or state because you just wanted to? Even better what if you could have more control over how many days, weeks, months or years you worked that traditional job? All because you didn’t have to choose between being able to visit a doctor when you got sick over suffering in silence.
Who’s going to pay for it? Well who pays for moving imaginary missile systems in Poland to imaginary missile systems on Naval Vessles? We all do and we all know if we were smarter about those kinds of decisions, we could easily afford stuff that actually impacts our lives, because it actually exists.
To me that sounds like a lot more freedom and liberty for the average American — not less. Wouldn’t a lot of companies have to reconsider the way they treat their employees in this new world order? I’m not suggesting utopia, some companies might find that with labor flowing more freely, they could pay less and source employees from entirely new populations that push old employees out.
But again, even in a bad situation, at least people could focus more on day to day needs and not about the looming spectre of a catastrophic health event.
Like Jack, all that, came off the top of my fucking head y’all.
It’s a gift what can I say.
Text posted at 11:42
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