I don’t know Mr. Schumacher personally, but am an admirer of his work with artists I admire such as Calexico and Neko Case. And the music world recently lost a more well known name to cancer: 7 time Grammy winner Roger Nichols, best known for his work with Steely Dan and a pioneer in sampling and digital recording. Despite being a world renowned producer and engineer of some of the biggest albums in music history, Mr. Nichol’s fight with cancer has pretty much left his family penniless. Even though Craig Schumacher has some health insurance, he is looking at a huge bill in the end, further complicated by the fact that his cancer treatments will make it impossible for him to work for large periods of time. While he may survive his cancer physically, who knows whether he will survive in financially.
These tragic events highlight a huge problem in America. Without getting into the politics of it, I think people really need to consider the fact that so many people in this country fall through the cracks in our current medical system. Not just poor people or “lazy” people who don’t work, but many of the artists and musicians you and I admire and look up to are at risk of losing everything if they happen to become ill. When you dedicate your life to becoming a professional musician you take many risks. You risk spending most of your life struggling to make a living, you risk your life and health on the road playing in smoky bars and eating sub-par food and you basically give up on things that many Americans take for granted: For most musicians there is no pension plan, no employer sponsored health plan, very little even in the way of Social Security benefits for your retirement years unless you also have some kind of corporate day job on the side.
I hope you will join me in taking a moment to reflect on this and think about how you can play a role in bringing some necessary changes in this country. This is after all, America. The worlds largest superpower. The country that put a man on the moon and made it possible for average people around the world to own automobiles and fly in planes. Is the idea that no American should have to go bankrupt when he or she gets sick really that farfetched?!
