Qualifying for Obamacare

There has been way too much going on around here.  Foremost it has been the midterm elections.  Thank God the The Koch brothers accomplished their goal getting North Carolina Speaker of the House into the Senate.  It doesn't mean for a fleeting moment the Republicans will get anything accomplished.  They have the majority now in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.  Let's watch them continue with their ridiculous agenda suing the President and trying to dismantle the Affordable Care Act instead of governing the country effectively.  I am not happy with the result, but it was surprising.  I learned that without an African-American President rallying the minority vote the democrats don't win.  Evidently the populace supportive of President Obama and his agenda weren't motivated to vote in the mid term elections.  That is disappointing.  Is it any different than the Republicans' take on Obamacare, Welfare, Medicaid, or food stamps?  Perhaps this contingency are the same old deadbeats.  That will remain to be seen.  What I now for certain is that I personally will have my Obamacare relinquished come its end on December 31st, 2014.  Because I have been staying with my mother in her home because she is aging, I will post no discernible income for the year 2014.  I have been a cook and a yard attendant, but that is not easy work.  I feel to abide by the rule and regulations of the Internal Revenue Service, officially she should claim me as a dependent.  I feel sure stogy Republicans surely will not allow a fifty two year old son to be claimed as a dependent by an eighty two years old mother.  Under the Affordable Care Act I will not have to pay the penalty for not having health insurance, because I didn't earn enough income to file a federal income tax return this year.  It is unsettling. I qualified for Obamacare like millions of other moderate income singles and families.  That means you work and make roughly between fourteen thousand and twenty-eight thousand dollars a year.  The kicker is low income Americans who make less than the federal government's poverty level do not qualify for Obamacare.  They are left with Medicaid.  With a cousin who works in the Department of Social Services expressly for this contingency, I have been told unless you are disabled and can't work you will not qualify for Medicaid.  Just today I received a notification from the Health Insurance Marketplace stating what I all ready knew.  While I did qualify for a subsidy originally, because I have been living with my mother and not earning income this past year, I will not qualify again for Obamacare.  I will fall into the category of low income Americans who will not be able to receive either Obamacare or Medicaid.  Interestingly enough President Obama took into account this faction of low earning Americans and offered the states millions of dollars for a Medicaid expansion to help cover these people.  Because Republicans staunchly disagree with the Affordable Care Act and want to dismantle the legislation, many governor's turned down the money.  That includes North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory.  The money that was meant to insure me in the year 2015 was refused by my state.  While my current tax status  is an anomaly because I have been working in the cruise industry for over twelve years, I must understand the nature of my situation regarding eligibility for a health care subsidy.  I did not earn income, because voluntarily I stayed with my mother in her home on her dime.  It feels very uncomfortable to surmise because of this change in income status I may have to re-pay my subsidy on my 2015 tax return.  I must re-apply for Obamacare through the health care marketplace between November 15th and December 15th.  After updating this income information simply I will not again qualify for the subsidy.  I will lose my coverage, because I chose not to work and take care of my aging mother.  After working as a ship's pianist since 2002 traveling the world, it is not as simple as returning to your childhood home and reinventing yourself.  The work in the music field that was available the entirety of my adult life starkly now is absent.  Upon coming back to my childhood home to help a family member and needing plausible employment in my chosen field, I am faced with a dire situation.  It seems while I gainfully have been  employed as musician at sea away from my childhood home, the music industry has collapsed.  While particular cruise companies have reduced the number of musician jobs, my line has maintained them.  Possibly this is why joined the cruise industry to begin with.  In the year 2001 I was working steadily as a pianist in bands.  When my father recuperated from a small stroke he began playing again, and I was free to take the cruise job.  I never have looked back until now.  While taking another ship still is an option, the notion of leaving my mother alone is not appealing.  It is a difficult situation.  For other looking in it seems simple.  "Get a job."  Get a job in a country where the music industry recently has collapsed.  Of all the times in thirty years of musical performance that I need employment, it is now that the American music industry has become extinct.  Intriguingly the notion that music somehow should be free has inundated social consciousness in our country.  On any conceivable level this does not compute in my brain.  As human beings in a Capitalist socioeconomic system we pay for everything.  That is the nature of the system.  I never have agreed with our chosen system, but the choosing of music somehow to be exempt from our system is uncanny.  Perhaps air is the only thing for which we do not mechanically pay.  Now by corporate America's choosing we pay for drinking water.  It used to be available inexpensively through our public works commission.  Someone decided this provided water no longer was fit to drink, and so corporate America began to sell it to us.  I am surprised also they have not bottled our free air.  This too will come when the magnetosphere collapses, and we are forced to dwell in a man mades structure shielded either from nuclear fall out from the sun's harmful solar rays or an exploded reactor or bomb.  Then they will be able to charge us for oxygen.  Until then we continue to pay property taxes for our land.  We buy food.  We buy cable television.  We buy internet services for the World Wide Web.  We buy wireless communication for our smart phones.  We buy Hollywood movies.  Why should we not still buy music?  My answer only can be that the effectiveness of music as a soul moving social conscience has been rendered impotent by the polluting of its medium.  Air.  Since the invention of the internal combustion engine and the burning of fossil fuels for energy our air has become more and more polluted.  Consequently the protective layer of Ozone in our atmosphere is becoming depleted most notably over the South Pole.  While this contamination is alarming and important, it is not of which I speak.  Music has been weakened as an art form simply by the polluting of our air by industry.  Unlike electromagnetic waves, mechanical waves require air to travel.  If there were no air we could not hear music.  Slowly our air in America has been commandeered for other purposes.  It is host to noise pollution.  While noise used to dissipate naturally over distance, the invention of the diesel engine has changed this forever.  Because of its firing rate each and every diesel engine produces a low frequency sound wave.  Unlike the transient nature of sound waves produced by music, infrasonic waves created by diesel engines are continuous.  They act as a both a modulator and carrier wave for all other sound.  Because there are so many diesel engines in existence operating simultaneously, music no longer has its same sonic capabilities.  These severely have been diminished by the commandeering of air by industry.  If music is compared to America's need for the energy created by the diesel engine, it will pale.  Obviously this has what has occurred in America.  Ironically as so many jobs systematically have been outsourced to foreign countries, industry has become important than art in America.  Our country is an unsavory salvage yard for mass transportation.  I cannot make sense of it.  What is it Americans do everyday at their jobs necessitating reliance on a car or SUV?  I only can surmise that the automobile is our new culture acting as host for our smart phones.  I cannot support this newly chosen direction for the American economy.  I cannot support my life long devotion to the field of music, because the decision has been made to annihilate it.  In its place is a tepid, selfish, patronizing entity with none of the ideals of traditional music.  Instead of seeking to engage humanity with ideas and opinions, instead it masturbates.  This is the solution that has arisen from still working musicians in America.  Collectively a decision was made to abandon the traditional intentions of music and replace them with selfish ones.  I cannot do it.  In good conscience I cannot sacrifice something so engrained in my soul for monetary gain.  It never has been about the money.  It is about the human condition.  I would rather martyr my musical inclinations than pollute them with such filth.  The only simile I can deduce is this choice somehow is related to the recent onslaught of homosexuality in America.  While the man woman relationship has been paramount to the human condition since our inception, this has changed.  Music has changed.  I am not interested in the change in either.  I would rather continue my convictions both musically and sexually as I always have known, but I can't.  They playing field has been slanted.  The rules have been changed, and I no longer am interested in playing.