It’s also quite possible that, even after surviving, even if medical bills are somehow paid, the victim is permanently disabled, or has other lifelong medical problems stemming from the shooting. There is nothing to help them out there either.
That’s not quite true. If someone becomes legally disabled, there is government aid. It may be inadequate, but it’s not zero.
Becoming legally disabled also qualifies you for medicare (medicaid? I can never keep them straight) which is government-provided health insurance. Not all doctors accept it, as it reimburses at lower levels than private health insurance, but many do.
This is FQ and I feel like a lot of people are presenting absolute, worst-case scenarios as the common outcome of the questions OP is asking and are also getting some things outright factually wrong.
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As stated, you are not liable for taxes on gifts given to you. As a note–to avoid rich people simply “giving a gift” to a child as a vehicle to avoid estate taxes, there is a gift tax, which is assessed on the gift giver, not the gift recipient. However, you have to cross a fairly large threshold to hit that, and it resets each year (with a lifetime limit), the typical size of a GoFundMe donation will be below the level at which the IRS even considers it.
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There are multiple Federal programs to provide medical care, living expenses, and other aid/assistance to permanently disabled people. In fact one of the few reliable ways now that “traditional” welfare got Clintoned out in the 90s to get a permanent “government check” is permanent disability. It’s a question of policy if these services are bad or not and how they might be improved, but they are absolutely a thing that has existed for decades.
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ER departments discharge you when it is medically appropriate, they aren’t going to boot anyone out before hitting the normal standard of care, and they don’t keep you in the ER longer than necessary just because you were the victim of a mass shooting. The purpose of an ER department is to get you into a stable condition in which you can be discharged. If that discharge is with a referral for more long term / specialized treatment, if you have no ability to pay for that treatment that is when things can get dicey.
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The 2020 Census has some data on health insurance, in 2020 91.4% of Americans had health insurance at some point during the year. While it is true that the 10% or so of people that don’t have health insurance may end up with no ability to pay medical bills, it should also be understood 90% or so of the country does have health insurance. It’s also worth noting that a decent chunk of the 10% left actually could get health insurance and don’t, for various reasons. There’s a well-known problem in that a fairly big chunk of those people are actually eligible for Medicaid but just don’t understand that and have never enrolled. There are a lot of reasons that can happen (some homeless/ mental health people for example don’t navigate government programs very well; certain young and healthy lower income people who don’t have employment-based healthcare also just don’t understand it’s important so don’t look into the programs available.) After the PPACA, it truly is the case that most people who are sitting uninsured have better options than they once did, and a significant barrier to coverage is lack of enrollment in programs more than lack of affordability.
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Health insurance is not a magic wand, it has deductibles and copays, so while what I said above is true, it should be acknowledged that for some people in some income brackets, a medical event that causes you to need to max out your out of pocket limit for the year can be very disruptive financially.
I wasn’t shot, but was knifed in the chest and almost died, I lost plenty of money even though I had really good insurance.
I was on short term disability while I was off for about two months, so I lost about half my pay right there (~$10,000). The insurance paid for everything except the deductible, so I was out $4500 there, for a total of ~$14,500.
I was given an option by the state of Michigan to file for compensation from the victims of violent crimes fund, but it would have only paid out about 20% and the perpetrator would have been required to pay that back in monthly installments after they were released from prison. I chose not to go that route for just $2900 because that would have met that the person who stabbed me would have been thinking about me every month until they paid it off, most likely forever. I didn’t want that, I wanted a clean break so I turned it down. Haven’t heard from her going on 10 years now but my cousin contacted her and she screamed at him “Why isn’t he dead!”, so I guess that was the right decision.
Fair, I shouldn’t have said “nothing.” But, there is no effort to make you whole. As you said, it’s inadequate.
Here you were, working your way up your career, and suddenly, through no fault of your own, you are now only able to earn a maximum of 50% of what you were making, much less raises and promotions that you anticipated in the future.
If this came about due to a slip and fall in a grocery store, you’d be able to sue for lost wages, but because it came about due to an intentional act of violence, you can’t. (I mean, you could sue the shooter, but that’s not likely to get you anything.)
And you don’t qualify for medicare until you’ve been on SSI disability for two years, two years when you are likely facing some serious medical bills, and if you have bronze ACA coverage, that’ll help, but you are going to be on the hook for quite a bit anyway.
There is no difference between the slip in a store scenario and the being shot scenario. In both cases you can seek to have the tortfeasor make you whole via litigation.
Bingo.
I had a relative that was struck by a car while they were walking. The driver had the absolute minimum liability insurance (jack and shit). They had to be airlifted to a regional hospital and were then in the hospital and recovery center for three weeks. A lot, lot, lot of PT, OT, ST and other treatments. Guess who got to pay for a large portion of these expensive procedures? Sure, they could’ve sued the driver of the car, but that person didn’t own a house or have any significant income or assets. This is why so many go bankrupt in the US.
If you live in the US, please get better auto insurance. Maybe even an umbrella policy if you own a home and don’t want to lose it in case of emergency.
Even in countries like the UK with free medical care, the victims of random violence or simple misfortune are not that much better off.
As in the US, if you can pin the blame on some entity that can pay, you can make a claim for any losses: wages, extra travel costs, prosthetics, help at home etc etc. If there is no such entity, the NHS will patch you up and send you home. After that, there is a plethora of benefits and agencies to navigate before you can make a claim, and even then, it is far short of a decent income.
There is government compensation for victims of violent crimes but the rules are strict and claims may take a long time.
We watch a series of fly-on-the-wall documentaries following emergency ambulances. Some of the injuries featured are horrific and life-changing. If the victim is not able to make a claim:
A recent episode showed an off-road cyclist who crashed in some woods and suffered a brain injury. He was a twenty-something teacher, who will now spend the rest of his life living on benefits. Had he been run down by a car, he could have claimed £millions in compensation to cushion his disability.
I don’t really know of any country where the government guarantees you will be made whole, including all potential life opportunities you could have pursued after some misfortune. The whole concept of a safety “net” is it catches you in your fall before you hit the very bottom. It unfortunately just isn’t that feasible or realistic for government to fully right every bad thing that happened.
Like if a drunk driver with no insurance paralyzes a guy who just was the NFL’s #1 draft, is the government supposed to calculate what he could have made in a long NFL career and cut him a check?
Social safety nets are supposed to protect you from falling below some socially agreed upon level, make the world cosmically “fair” is a little bit of a reach for government.
Most perpetrators of crime - whether mass murder or random mugging - fall in the category of “Kamikaze Defense”, which is basically “go ahead and sue, I have nothing, you won’t even recover your lawyer’s fees.”
Best story like this, though, was someone who broke into a small business. He was one of 4 in the group, and at trial they were each hit with restitution - a quarter of $30,000 - except this guy, he was caught and in anohter caper and tried for all outstanding charges. The guy representing the businesses went to the judge and asked for restitution, got the joint and several judgement so the perp was on the hook for $30K. He then went and got a judgement against him even though the guy was in jail and had nothing. Everyone asked the fellow “why bother?” A few weeks after he gets out of jail, the fellow is a passenger in a car accident, and is assessed a payment for physiotherapy - $15,000. The insurance worker was a friend of the business, alerted the representative, who managed to intercept the cheque. Karma.
Some provinces in Canada have a “Victims of Crime” fund, but the payouts are not life-changing. OTOH, one of my in-laws had a major medical emergency, operation on his leg… discharged within a week. However, two months later he still gets his bandages changed twice daily by a visiting nurse, and the bandages and nurse are paid for by the provincial health care system. I assume that sort of thing would be the responsibility of the patient or his insurance in the USA.
The last time I was deep into Health Insurance contracts and legislation was before ACA (ObamaCare), so I don’t know if it’s changed, but it used to be that health insurance didn’t have to cover home health care (or could limit it to a certain number of visits each year), so in your scenario, responsibility would fall to the patient.
And before all y’all start getting all worked up, the patchwork of state laws got much worse. Texas didn’t cover any kind of mental health or substance abuse care into the 90s. Mammograms often weren’t covered at all (depending on state) because they weren’t “medically necessary”. I know those were two of the evils corrected by the ACA.
Obviously, sending a patient home and having nurse visits has the logical benefit of not tying up an expensive hospital bed unnecessarily, plus the morale benefits of being home rather than an institution. The provincial health plans don’t do this just to make the patient feel happy - it’s a definite health improvement process. Less likelihood of relapse.
I would imagine the patient unable to manage simple changing of bandages regularly would soon be back in hospital with a bad infection.
Except the store probably* actually has money, and the shooter, assuming that he is even still alive, does not.
It’s not adequate to provide you with housing.
Medicare, the Federal insurance. Also social security.
Ask your local senior citizen about the shortcomings of those programs.
Also, virtually everyone is denied admittance to that program on the first go-around. After which you are advised to hire an attorney who will get 1/3 of whatever you’re awarded as back-award when you finally do get on the program.
Yeah, well, the problem is that if I got “better auto insurance” I might not be able to afford the roof over my head - which is not an uncommon scenario.
I really wish we’d go to universal coverage like every other civilized nation so no one would have to go bankrupt from medical bills ever again.
The collection of benefits to which you are entitled can be enough to cover your housing. I’m from Appalachia (got out as soon as I could at 18) where disability basically replaced welfare in many families, and there are tons of people in my extended family who were able to cover housing for decades with the total State / Federal benefits they were able to get off of a disability. Appalachia has some of the lowest cost of living of any area in the United States though, so the money will certainly go further there than in other zipcodes.
Unlike most areas of practice, the relationship between an SSI / SSDI lawyer and their client has financial regulations imposed by the government. A lawyer representing you in an appeal on those benefits is statutorily capped at being paid 25% of your back-benefits, or $6,000, whichever amount is smaller.
Most poor kids are covered/eligible by Medicaid, but only IF (and it’s a big “if”) you live in the “right” state(s). Typically anyone with large medical expenses will have a social worker and/or hospital financial aid person guide them through the process of getting things covered. Some medical systems are charity-based, some have sliding scales, and some have funds from voluntary donations. One good thing is that Medicaid and some other things can go back (I want to say it’s 3 months, unless that changed with recent laws) so you can apply retroactively. Not good from an insurance standpoint but good for patients.
No experience with mass shootings, but I have experience with significant health/medical events. My dad, who always worked in an hourly job/industry that provided no health insurance, had an illness that left him pretty much unable to walk for a couple years. “Obamacare” pretty much saved his life and allowed him to buy a house in full when he “retired.” No he’s a big MAGA-guy, go figure. He got Medicaid as a working-poor adult due to expansion, got all his hospital, rehab, nursing home, chair, etc covered.
As for myself, I have “good insurance,” but I worked 50-60 hrs a week for over a year knowing I needed a significant surgery (and could possibly work it into an emergency situation) so that I could save money to pay the deductible, out of pocket, and lost wages while taking the minimum recovery time. My employer offers medical leave (technically unpaid) with optional short term disability pay that is a fraction of BASE income (which is already a fraction of my normal actual income since I get OT and various incentives) before taxes and benefits. I have to work over 10 hours a week to cover my subsidized benefits. So after I cashed in all my vacation time, PTO, and took out two 0% loans (which I could pay off by going back to work 60 hours a week 1 month after my surgery), I ended up on disability for a week and my net paycheck was under 7 dollars.
In general though, “access” to medical care is pretty much close to universal. It’s all the qualifiers, benefits cliffs, living in the right states, co-pays, etc that has to be figured out.
As far as one comment that said we have so many mass shootings that some aren’t even news-worthy- I doubt that. It’s a lot, but they are all well covered and publicized and I bet most victims have no problem getting their stories out.
In a post-ACA world (with some exceptions) I would not contribute to a GoFund Me in most cases that I see, as most working adults have access to insurance one way or another and choose not to. And, as I’ve pointed out, can easily get care/funding after the fact if truly needy. I would make an exception for poor children or families who need funeral expenses and that sort of thing. Also, like everything in a social media society, often those who least need it get the most. Like down on their luck celebrities and such. I had a local celebrity die of a heart attack not that long ago. His lifestyle pretty much guaranteed that outcome eventually. He was considered a big success in his field and business, had videos all over the place of his large expensive property, etc. But his family needed a 1/4 million bucks goFundme and they got it in a couple days.
I didn’t see it mentioned, but the family of the Sandy Hook children reached a large settlement against the gun manufacturers, who they had sued for violating state consumer protection laws under the theory that they were advertising these products as civilian war weapons.
And here I found that the Air Force had to pay out $230 million following a mass shooting because it did not report the gunman’s previous assault conviction to the FBI, which could have prevented him from purchasing the semiautomatic rifle he used to kill 26 people.
Here’s another huge legal settlement, this time after the Vegas shooting, and between the victims and their families and the hotel. It settled all of the various lawsuits, where victims and families accused MGM Resorts of failing to protect people at the concert venue or stop the shooter from amassing an arsenal of weapons and ammunition over several days before he opened fire.
No. It’s considered a personal gift, and non-taxable to the recipient.