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posted by martyb on Tuesday August 13 2019, @05:57AM   Printer-friendly
from the give-me-back-my-Obamacare dept.

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)


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 13 2019, @08:49PM (2 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday August 13 2019, @08:49PM (#879820)

    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.

    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 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

    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.

    just the vanishing few who fall through the cracks

    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...

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  • (Score: 2) by slinches on Tuesday August 13 2019, @09:26PM

    by slinches (5049) on Tuesday August 13 2019, @09:26PM (#879832)

    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.

    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.

    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...

    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

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 14 2019, @12:06PM (#880102) Journal

    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.

    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.

    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.

    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.

    "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.

    Population had better be stabilizing, and even reversing growth, soon, for lots of reasons that are essentially beyond governmental and societal control.

    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?