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From Fox News, Elderly couple found dead in apparent murder-suicide, note says they could not afford medical care:
A Washington state man allegedly killed himself after killing his wife, and left a note for authorities saying that he was driven to do so because they could not afford to pay for medical care for her serious health conditions.
The man, identified by the Whatcom County Medical Examiner Gary Goldfogel in a statement to Fox News as Brian S. Jones, was 77, and his wife, Patricia Whitney-Jones, was 76.
[...] "It's very tragic that one of our senior citizens would find himself in such desperate circumstances where he felt murder and suicide were the only option," [Whatcom County Sheriff Bill Elfo] said. "Help is always available with a call to 9-1-1."
"We do what we can to help them," Elfo added in a telephone interview with Fox News. "We can't solve all their healthcare needs, but we can help them until a better day comes."
Elfo said he has seen people close to him struggle with healthcare issues and get exasperated fighting what can be a bureaucratic system.
"I know it gets very frustrating," the sheriff said, "you can get very easily worn down, and [roadblocks] build up over and over again."
From WSWS (ICFI/SEP), Elderly husband kills wife, then himself, in desperation over skyrocketing healthcare costs:
Police found the notes, which explained what had happened. Jones' wife, Patricia Whitney-Jones, suffered from serious health problems, and the couple could not afford medical care. Jones, an apparent Navy veteran, wrote directions as to how police could contact their next of kin. Police found the couple's two dogs and turned them over to the Humane Society.
The home was not located in a forgotten, impoverished area but in a semi-rural neighborhood near the Cascade Mountains where homes are valued in the $400,000 range. The bottom 90 percent of people in "the richest country in the world" are living under financial hardship that varies only in terms of degree.
[...] [The couple's next-door neighbor, Sherrie Schulteis] further noted:
"But here is the horribleness of this whole thing, less than 6 months ago our across the street neighbor shot himself, a young man with PTSD [Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder], cops and SWAT all lined our street then too. He was young--in his 50's-- and this guy and the whole block knew and saw him riding his bike, or walking his tiny dog also. He lived directly across from our house and we talked with him everyday as we were outside a lot. We had no idea his PTSD would kick in and he started believing everyone was someone else and he was going to kill everyone."
Also at People and The Lynden Tribune (EU blocked)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 13 2019, @01:31PM (15 children)
There are an average of 123 suicides per day in the US alone. Murder-suicide is a common pattern among family members, particularly those who feel hopeless and unable to care for their loved ones.
Just because one note mentions the high cost of healthcare doesn't really mean anything. He's not wrong, it's a huge problem and absolutely shameful reflection on us as a country that we cannot bring ourselves to do anything (effective) about it. But, on balance, one suicide note means very little when there have been over 400,000 suicides since the passage of Obamacare, and we - as a country - haven't done much of anything positive toward improving the cost of healthcare since then.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 13 2019, @01:44PM (7 children)
The best thing you can do is stop paying insurance. Lower demand, cut out a middle man -> lower prices.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday August 13 2019, @02:55PM (3 children)
Wrong.
Lower demand comes from lower demand. And there is not lower demand.
Cutting out middle people is nice. But there will be rationing in any method you use. Therefore you need rationers.
I agree that moving to straight up single payer would cut out all the profits that insurance takes. You would still have middle people rationing the care, because there is unlimited demand and limited supply.
This sig for rent.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 13 2019, @04:25PM (2 children)
Yes, there is lower demand because I don't want any of these chemicals they are pushing based on flimsy pseudoscientific reasoning. The more people who realize the reality of the situation (that the healthcare industry is overrun by scammers and useful idiots from top to bottom), the less demand there will be.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday August 13 2019, @07:02PM (1 child)
You think chemicals are bad for you?
I've got to tell you about Dihydrogen Monoxide [dhmo.org]. Inhaling just a little bit of it could kill you.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 13 2019, @09:56PM
Yes, that is a long known chemical with well understood dangers and benefits. Now take this ssri...
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 13 2019, @06:08PM (2 children)
Had a small group plan once, got rate hiked into oblivion after first child was born (premiums jumped over $1000 per month...) went "self insured" instead, banked the $1K per month for two years before having the next kid. Actually managed to get big company health insurance for the 2nd birth, but... being "self insured" is a great way to pay your insurance premiums and then some every time you go to the doctor.
MDs who will accept $50 for a procedure from your copay + insurance coverage will cheerfully present you with a bill for $700 for the same service. Don't want to be sent to collections? Ask for a self-insured discount they'll happily knock 10% off that $700 for you.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 13 2019, @07:01PM (1 child)
Then go to a doctor that makes sense instead of a scammer. Do not *ever* tell them you are insured, because there may be something in a contract with an insurance company saying they need to rip you off then.
They waste 90% of their resources dealing with insurance companies so will give you a 90% discount. Sometimes more, sometimes closer to 50%. But only a 10% discount or even a higher price means you are going to a scam doctor.
Anyone paying for health insurance in the US at this point is a fool. The only reason could be as a tax avoidance strategy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 13 2019, @11:50PM
Well, OK. I just hope that neither you nor anyone else in your family gets hit by a bus or comes down with cancer. It will probably be a very rough ride for you.
(Score: 2) by slinches on Tuesday August 13 2019, @05:31PM (6 children)
Cost of health care is an issue, but that isn't the only one. The other part of the issue that no one seems to talk about is the lack of familial support. The next generations should be there to support their family in old age and provide the comfort, dignity and care that many need as they reach old age. They don't even mention in the article whether the couple had children.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 13 2019, @06:12PM (5 children)
As DINKs age, that formula is falling apart for them. As SITKs (single-income, two kids) with double autism in the current generation age, that formula is blown to tiny pieces before age 50.
Not everyone could depend on their children to care for them, even in the past, but much moreso in the future - because the kids aren't there, or can't or simply don't care. Also, remember, even among couples with 2.1 "normal, average" children, the majority of those are barely able to support themselves financially these days.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 13 2019, @07:08PM
Or the SITKs were boomers that basically ensured their kids would be just barely above water their entire lives, leaving no money to take care of their parents. Or the kids were forced to wait until their mid 30s to have kids, resulting in them having young children to take care of as the retiring boomer grandparents need support.
(Score: 2) by slinches on Tuesday August 13 2019, @08:27PM (3 children)
Agreed. Not everyone could rely on support from their children for various reasons, but far more could before than is the case now. The problem comes from DINKs that don't plan sufficiently to cover their support needs in old age and the condition of broken families being the norm. If there's a rare family that needs additional outside support, that's something the community can handle. But when it's the majority, then there's not enough support to go around.
Based on your other posts, it seems that you prefer a top down government based solution that socializes the costs of the care for the elderly. The problem with that is that it subsidizes the same poor preparedness and lack of social responsibility that caused the problem in the first place. Yes, you can provide basic health coverage that way. Although, that is lacking in the humanity that local community and family support can provide. So, I'd rather promote policies that incentivize health related retirement savings, improve competition and transparency in health care cost and strengthen the idea of family as a core institution in society. That way we don't need the government to support everyone, rather just the vanishing few who fall through the cracks.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 13 2019, @08:49PM (2 children)
I prefer such a solution to socialize "basic decency" for the elderly, poor, and even non working but "able bodied" younger. If a significant slice of society is living in fear of homelessness, starvation, inability to treat basic diseases due to lack of money... that creates a negative impact on a much larger slice of society, not only due to the higher cost net cost of care when they finally do get some kind of relief, but also the bad behavior that is only human nature when put under those kinds of stress.
I'd prefer a world that works that way. Unfortunately, that's not the world I live in. No matter how much you incentivize, promote, educate, encourage, what have you, there's a huge slice of the population that ends up on skid row - and once there it's little help to point out how they got there. More productive, in my opinion, to not let them get there, rather than to pay for them to be there as an "object lesson" to the rest of us, most of whom aren't really paying attention.
Same could be said for the US incarceration rates... are our "crime" rates any lower for having 5+x as many people in prison as other countries? Hanging pickpockets does not stop pickpocketing, even in the crowd watching the hanging.
Population had better be stabilizing, and even reversing growth, soon, for lots of reasons that are essentially beyond governmental and societal control. We're not going to solve corruption and inefficiency soon enough to support 10+B people on the planet, and even if we do that won't help us when population reaches 20B... In a shrinking global population, the shape of the family is going to change fairly dramatically. More DINKs, less of the "youngest daughter doesn't marry so she can take care of mother in her old age..." Try as you might to incentivize DINKs to save for retirement, there are going to be millions of them who don't. We could always send them to a fertilizer factory so they get one last chance to do something productive...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by slinches on Tuesday August 13 2019, @09:26PM
We will never live in a world that works that way if we give up on the underlying principles and instead promote policies that undermine them. Why not choose the most effective path that still promotes the idea that people should plan ahead and take care of themselves and their families? Maybe it's not the absolute most effective path in the short term, but if it can address the problem in the long term it means fewer people have to suffer overall.
These changes are already happening on their own. People in the most economically prosperous countries are reproducing below replacements rates now. In the US, the population wouldn't be growing at all without immigration.
What we aren't doing is adapting to these changes effectively. We should have tax advantaged personal health savings plans available to everyone and make them mandatory for anyone without kids over the age of 35. We should help establish community collective care groups that can act as a surrogate family for those who can't have or don't want children. We should give additional tax breaks to those who are taking care of the elderly and generally changing what we value in society to put more value on social support of others rather than just how much we each earn.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 14 2019, @12:06PM
It abuses the term "solution" to use it in this way. It's telling that you attempt to evoke such fear in the name of relieving it. That tells me that you have no trouble with fear when it suits your purposes. Nor can fear be fixed by government. It's something that humans do really well by nature. They will be afraid of something whether they have reason to or not.
This is yet another unfixable ever-problem that forever justifies bad argument. If instead, you had proposed to reduce the risk of homelessness, starvation, etc rather than merely the perception of it, then that would be at least a useful goal - though not likely to be obtained by your approaches.
"Unfortunately, that's not the world I live in." That argument works for me as well. No matter how much of our society's resources you divert to pointless "basic decency" theater, there will still be a small portion of the population that ends up on skid row.
That's a solved problem in the US - which as slinches noted is only growing due to immigration. So you are referring to population growth in other countries or perhaps to US immigration - neither which has anything to do with US healthcare. Why are we enlarging the scope to include problems that can never be fixed by healthcare reform?