To our fellow Tennesseans: if music has ever carried you through a hard season, lifted your spirits or reminded you who you are, this is your moment to carry music in return.
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From the blues that first cried in Memphis, to the birth of country music in Bristol and the songs that are written and recorded on Music Row, Tennessee’s greatest export is music. It is not just our culture; it is our livelihood, our identity and our inheritance.
Behind the scenes, fame does not always equal fortune. Too many of the people who make this music — including the songwriters, singers, road crews and studio engineers — live with the fear that one illness or one accident could take away both their health and their ability to keep making music.
For more than a decade, Music Health Alliance has helped to #HealTheMusic by providing access to healthcare for our beloved music family. One of the most powerful tools we’ve had in the fight has been the Enhanced Premium Tax Credits.
These credits are what make it possible for recording artists, musicians, small business owners and gig workers to actually afford health insurance through the Marketplace. Without them, the math just does not work; yet these tax credits are at risk of expiring at the end of the year.
How the expiration of Marketplace tax credits will impact musicians
These credits quietly lower monthly premiums, automatically, every time someone signs up for a Marketplace plan. A songwriter in East Nashville, a fiddle player in Johnson City, a tour bus driver out of Jackson — they may not even realize they are getting the help. They just know their insurance bill is one they can afford to pay in order to get the healthcare they need to survive.
Right now, more than half a million Tennesseans benefit from these credits, including nearly 140,000 small business owners and self-employed workers. Thousands and thousands of them belong to the music industry. Nationwide, countless musicians rely on them. But unless Congress acts, this support will vanish at the end of the year.
If that happens, premiums could almost double overnight. For a 60-year-old couple in Tennessee making about $82,000, that means paying $19,000 more a year. That is not a tough decision, it is an impossible one. And it is not just families who will pay the price. Tennessee stands to lose over 13,000 jobs and see nearly $2 billion disappear from our economy if these tax credits are not extended.
We protect Tennessee’s music by protecting the people who create it
This is not about politics. It is about people. It is about whether the very folks who give Tennessee its sound, and our state’s greatest natural resources, will be forced into silence by health care costs they can no longer afford.
Senators Blackburn and Hagerty, along with other Tennessee leaders, have long stood up for our music industry, protecting intellectual property, backing performance royalties and fighting for pandemic relief for gig workers. We are asking them now to do the same with healthcare.
Because at the end of the day, music is not just made of notes, it is made of people. And those people need health care they can afford if they are going to keep writing, touring and recording, ultimately providing an economic impact to our state of over $5 billion each year.
To our fellow Tennesseans: if music has ever carried you through a hard season, lifted your spirits or reminded you who you are, this is your moment to carry music in return. Call your representatives. Tell them to extend the Enhanced Premium Tax Credits.
Let us not allow health care costs to silence the voices that tell our story. Let us keep the music playing — for Tennessee, for the nation, for us all.
Tatum Allsep is the CEO of Music Health Alliance
About Music Health Alliance
Music Health Alliance’s mission is to Heal the Music by providing advocacy and access to healthcare and mental health resources that protect, direct and connect music professionals with medical and financial solutions. Thanks to the direct efforts of MHA, over 32,000 members of the music community across the country have gained access to lifesaving transplants, medicine, mental health resources, emergent dental care and end of life care, saving over $145 million in healthcare costs. MHA’s services are available at no cost to those who have made a living in the music industry for three or more years. Spouses, partners and children of qualifying individuals may also receive access to the nonprofit’s services from birth to end of life.
For more information please visit or contact MHA directly at 615-200-6896 or [email protected].
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