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Mike Crawford Is Dead, Contributed to Mac System 7.5.X and Activist
Some of you might know him on the west coast. He worked for Apple fixing/debugging System 7.5.X and attended Cal Tech. He was an activist for the mentally ill and homeless. He was openly bisexual and open about his schizoaffective disorder. His Facebook page.
I had helped him with his project Soggy Jobs which is unfinished. It was his project he needed a business model for.
He was on CNN about the taking away of tax credit from software engineers.
He was a member here at Hacker News.
He had serious physical illnesses that made him suffer and he took his own life.
I was an online friend of his, and I too suffer from schizoaffective disorder.
His wish was not to be forgotten to be remembered through his works. To at least have a Wikipedia article written on him or some other Wiki. Wikipedia named him non-notable about ten years ago. But if you met him, he'd always show you respect and even if he disagreed with you he was nice about it.
takyon: Here is MDC's last post on Warp Life, and Last Will And Testament. User page. Twitter.
(Score: 3, Informative) by dry on Wednesday March 27 2019, @05:24AM (2 children)
Here in BC, you still have to register, pay a monthly fee or prove that you're low income (tax returns) to be covered. I'd assume that it is similar in most places though we're the only Canadian Province where people have to pay, about $70 a month for a working single person making over $35,000 a year IIRC. Drugs also aren't generally covered either though MDC may have been eligible for a Provincial disability check, and drug coverage, depending on his income. I doubt that he would have had a problem having a Dr sign off though who knows.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Wednesday March 27 2019, @02:32PM (1 child)
Oregon's program before the affordable care act was better than that. Income requirements were somewhere around less than 40k/year, no monthly expense, and drug coverage. Big downside was that if you got too expensive the state would refuse to pay for treatment but offer to cover assisted suicide, this happened to a woman who was going through cancer her second time. After the ACA passed the paperwork got 10x worse, cheapest plans are several hundred a month, a deductible, bad drug coverage, less treatment coverage. To my understanding MDChad a hard time getting the paperwork filed. Last I heard on that he was working with someone helping him get it done, that mush have fallen through.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday March 28 2019, @06:06AM
That coverage was only for low income people? Must have still left a lot of people without coverage unless they paid for insurance and I don't hear too many good things about the American medical insurance industry.
As for the ACA, it seems to have helped quite a few people and screwed quite a few too. The whole thing seems foreign to me as the most I've really had to worry about is paying for the occasional medications and as I've been healthy, there hasn't been much of that. Generally that $70 is taken out of the paycheck so most people don't notice it much and it is going away next year. I'm actually covered by the federal government due to my wife so haven't had to pay in a long time and she and my son gets full coverage, even glasses, dental as well as drugs.
Never heard of anyone getting pressured for assisted suicide, at that it sounds quite hard to qualify, despite what our Supreme Court ordered. There is some triage that will happen if your case is pretty hopeless though generally you will get treatment, especially if life threatening. Worst is elective types of surgeries where you can be waiting too long for a new knee.
As for the type of treatment that MDC needed, that seems harder and harder to get, besides some drugs. I think part of the problem is mental illness is invisible. You see someone with a broken leg and are understanding, someone who acts weirdly, not so much.