I meant to add “don’t try this at home” 
[hijack]Don’t get too attached to your insulin.
High cost of insulin is lethal for some
I worry most about the type I patients. No amount of diet/exercise can ever eliminate their absolute need for insulin. [/hijack]
Is insulin the kind of drug you can buy from overseas and it still be good or is the shipping requirement too onerous?
I heard about this story, I thought I heard someone on NPR claim that in El Salvador you could buy a vial of the same insulin for $10.
I know walmart has cheap insulin, but I’ve heard that is nowhere near as good as the newer brands. But I honestly don’t know much about how it works.
Just witness a mob hit and agree to testify in exchange for being put in the witness protection program.
Alternately, become an accountant for the mob and then turn state’s evidence for the same deal.
Isn’t this why some people move to Thailand?
I’ve heard that Ecuador is another newer place for people who wish to “disappear”.
It really depends on who wants to find you and if it’s the government or not, or if the people looking for you can obtain government records, legally or otherwise.
In the US, my current contact contact information is probably only recorded by Customs and the IRS, as well as a few financial institutions. None of these should give that information out, but I suppose there are illegal methods of finding out. However, ordinary people would not likely know even how to obtain that illegally.
I’m pretty sure the DMV (well, at least in CA, and probably everywhere now) has access to the SSN database–they use it to check name spelling–and would see the age (DOB) discrepancy.
Also, many (most?) DMVs would take your your fingerprint, and conceivably find a match if you already have gotten an ID with your true identity.
Not in Illinois – at least, not on renewals. I first got an Illinois DL when I moved here from Wisconsin in 1989, and they didn’t take fingerprints then, and I’ve never been asked for them on a renewal since.
I have no idea if they now take fingerprints for a first-time license applicant in Illinois, but I think I’d be surprised if they did.
I think it would be easier for an illegal alien to “disappear” than a citizen because he was never here in the first place. He’d be entering the country under the radar and would have to just remain there. A citizen, on the other hand, would have to drop off the radar, which would be much more difficult because he would already be established in a gazillion different data bases.
You think with the zillions of DL applicants every year DMV’s are cross referencing that much? Unless there is a red flag, I doubt it. A person with a SS card, birth certificate, and maybe a local college ID card with a picture on it probably wouldn’t raise much suspicion.
Getting their first driver license at 50 seems suspicious to me, though. But there are people who have never drove during ther adult life I suppose.
And a lot of state driver license agencies are not using finger prints. My state of Wisconsin doesn’t.
What they do use, however, is facial recognition software. So if one tries to get a license and they already have one in another name it’s going to come up. or if one tries to get a license in the name of someone else it’s going to come up.
If it were me I’d get a license in one of the 3-4 states that isn’t a member of the national drivers compact. That might lower the risk of getting tripped up.
Of course, all this is illegal and I hope mentioning it doesn’t violate my Mod warning. But it’s kind of hard to not mention illegal things when talking about such a subject.
If you didn’t mind your new life being that of a vagrant, it would be extremely easy:
- Catch a bus to some other city
- Start begging
- ???
- Profit
If you get arrested or asked by anyone, tell them that you are (insert fictional name here) and you don’t have ID. There’s probably some federally-funded agency or NGO that’ll even help you obtain an ID for the fictional new you.
If you want to live a nice, comfortable life where you have a stable job, bank accounts, can travel overseas, etc, it gets a lot more complicated.
ETA: have you ever submitted fingerprints for a background check or anything?
I wouldn’t fancy my chances of not running into people I know. 3 instances: I drove east and we were going to see some people. On the way to their house, we saw them walking up the street. This was in the middle of Sydney, not podunk junction, nowheresville. I flew to London. First person I noticed was somebody from “back home”. Went to a youth hostel in Scotland, met some people. Later went back to London and went to a concert at the Royal Albert Hall. Sitting next to me were the people I’d met in Scotland. Another instance from a friend at the youth hostel I was staying at in London. She went to Berlin, and ran into the guys who ran the London hostel.
I think you’d need to stay indoors if you didn’t want to run into somebody from your former place of residence.
MIght be as good, might be stored improperly, too old, etc.
Pretty much true. The same drugs are sold for much less in other countries than they are in the US.
Walmart insulin is perfectly fine and effective. I don’t know why anyone would claim it’s nowhere near as good. It’s the same version of Regular and NPH that’s been used for decades to treat insulin and help diabetics.
Now the Walmart NPH won’t be the fancy long-acting insulins like Lantus, purported to last for 24 hours or more (but not found to be particularly more effective than NPH, tho it was until recently priced to be 10 x more expensive).
Nor will the Walmart Regular be the ultra-fast acting insulins like the novologs and humalogs. Which can be more convenient for some diabetics in some cases. Again, at 10+ x the cost of good old Regular.
But it’s getting harder and harder for diabetics to get access to the low priced versions anymore. For one thing, the prices are getting jacked up by a LOT of manufacturers of these versions. For another, some health care systems (like those in prisons) are no longer allowed by Walmart and similar discount retailers to buy tons of cheap insulin there. They must use the institutional suppliers, whose prices are much higher.
It’s not a good situation.
But don’t diss NPH and Regular. :mad:
This is why it is recommended to have plastic surgery to change one’s appearance as well as the ID changes.
I know the OP said “USA”, but if one really wanted to disappear, India would be the place.
Having spent 6 months there traveling all over the country, I can tell you that little effort is made keeping track of foreigners. I meet two Americans in Goa that had been in the country for over 3 years without any sort of official government documents. Their visas had expired years before. They said one only has to stay out of trouble, no fighting, no drunk driving and most importantly, don’t try to leave the country. They were both working at foreign traveler restaurants, making enough money to get by and staying with local families.
I don’t use insulin, so I don’t know how they compare. I was basing my statement on this article.
The author claims that blood sugar control with walmart insulin is far harder, but again I have no idea.
I’ve been to India. Tall white guy with red hair. Real hard for me to blend in. And Indians stare at foreigners the way it is. Even in a country of over 1 billion I just don’t think I’d be comfortable hiding out there. Plus don’t get me started on how much I hated the place, and I was all over that country.
But YMMV.
I think it’s hard to predict the difficulty.
I read a story on CNN a few years back. College girl goes missing from college, parents call authorities, searches turn up nothing , case goes cold.
She was found a few years later, a few states away.:eek:
Working under her own name:o and social security number:smack::rolleyes:.
She got tired of Mommy and Daddy’s shit and actually took off and made her own way.
Note: I tried to find the news story, but every search I do is pretty much about girls who weren’t found:( I don’t wanna wade through all that.
I agree. And I think who is trying to hunt you down matters as well. Authorities wanting you on a serious criminal investiation are going to be harder to stay hidden from than mom and dad.
My brother ran off a few weeks prior to his 18th birthday. We didn’t find him for over 4 months.
Of course, none of had us bothered to look for him either.
Turned out he was just shacking up with an older girl until she got sick of him. Cleared up his acne though. There wasn’ t a zit on him. Kripes even the little bump thing on his watch was gone.
They do that in Thailand too. However, Bangkok, Pattaya and even Chiang Mai are places routinely used by people doing just this. There are just so many Westerners there now that it is easy to disappear. The local government is starting to crack down on that sort of thing though and trying to weed out the riffraff.