Would universal health care pay for the illegal alcoholic aliens from Xemulon 4 home birth with a midwife?
Health care is not primarily about avoiding death, it’s about improving quality of life. The average person dies once, but gets sick several dozens of times.
Living in fear of developing a medical condition more serious than a seasonal cold because your employer doesn’t offer health insurance and if you need medical care you have to go to the emergency room and pay out the ass and probably file bankruptcy like I had to do after my kidney stone is a shitty fucking way to go about your life.
RUN-ON SENTENCES ARE FUN!
The average person? :dubious:
Great, now lekatt’s going to wander in.
We need universal healthcare because some guy opted not to save anything for emergencies when he was working and now claims that he is unable to work?
According to this article, poor Mr. Verone has had trouble holding down his low-skilled employment; makes vague, non-specific allegations of back pain and foot pain; and, despite alleging a lack of money for treatment, moved out of his house so that he could live in a Hampton Inn and took cabs to go “rob” banks while awaiting his arrest.
This evidence tends to show someone who is uninterested in continuing to work (he was very likely dismissed from his jobs as truck driver and convenience store clerk due to unacceptable performance and/or absenteeism). His allegations of employment-precluding pain are not credible. His decision to leave his house and bide his time in a much more expensive hotel shows that he was waiting for the state to come in and furnish him with free room, board, and (narcotic) pain medication instead of working for a living.
He “robbed” this bank because he was denied disability benefits and ran out of food stamps (which are only given for three months to able-bodied adults without dependents) and figured he could force the government’s hand by engaging in sham criminal behavior.
This has nothing to do with health care costs being out of anybody’s reach, and the inability to distinguish those who are needy due to circumstances beyond their control versus those who are needy due to a lack of motivation to change their circumstances is exactly what conservatives worry about with respect to social welfare programs.
If they’re giving out free ponies in prison, fuck yes I want a pony.
Well there are supposedly these two chaps…
I’m not sure ‘pony’ means what you think it means in prison slang. The kind of ride you get with it might be slightly different from what you are expecting.
The article I read stated that he’d worked as a truck driver for a soda company (Coca-Cola? Dr. Pepper?) for seventeen years before he was laid off. That doesn’t sound like someone with an absentee problem or unacceptable performance. It also stated that the heavy lifting required in his second job was the cause of his back pain, that the subsequent back pain caused him to be unable to work the part-time job he got after that, and that he has a “protrusion” from his chest.
I do wonder about the hotel and the cab. Did he decide to splurge before going to prison with the last cash he had on hand? He has a brother and a sister, and while he didn’t want to burden them with his medical expenses, what about selling the house, moving in with one of them, and paying the medical bills from what he got? Unless, of course, like countless other Americans, he made a very poor choice about his mortgage and is now underwater on the value of the house.
I don’t know. The whole story seems tailor-made to explode in the media, then to be kicked around like a soccer ball by commentators until I, for one, would rob a bank if they’d JUST SHUT UP. I would rather we talk about the facts of the matter and debate the issue like grown ups, instead of lobbing poster children at each other like they were Plague infested dead cattle catapulted over the wall of a besieged enemy.
This guy is a piece of shit.
That is all.
People can be “underwater” on the value of their house without having made “a very poor choice.” Unless the poor choice was buying a house.
Is that how poster children are lobbed at someone? I’ve been doing it wrong.
You fuck ponies in prison?
Well it’s a lot harder if they’re free to run around.
I believe in accessible health care, but these kinds of cases are often about mental health issues.
The pain issues and chest ‘protuberance’ are red flags in my view.
Otara
Would anyone like to compare and contrast Universal Health Care and food stamps for those couple of idiots on the first page? Thanking you in advance.
I think we do need universal mental health care, & mental health care in the present régime is sometimes perverted into a “money game” as a friend of mine once put it.
The insistence on confirming that the needy are “deserving” is one thing that bothers me about our current system. Since when does deserving have anything to do with economic efficiency?
So, you’re too stupid to even try to argue your own case?
Even there we have a problem, access to care for mental issues is even harder to get in the USA.
To an extent, I agree with you and would like to see a guaranteed minimum income that would furnish everybody with the bare minimum of housing, food, and medical care. I’m not terribly worried that productivity would take a hit because such basic provisions really are just a hair over penury and most people want to live in a manner a little more opulent than that, which desire provides the motivation to work.
But I don’t think Mr. Verone even has significant health problems. (In light of the benefits programs he was on, I presume he applied for SSI/SSDI and was denied.) And it sounds like he had some money at the end: he had a hotel room, he took a cab, he gave away his furniture.
Also note, when asked what he would do if he were just released, he said he would “rob” another bank. At no point has he expressed an interest in vocational rehab or job-seeking assistance.
So what we have here is someone who just wants to take it easy and have the state tend to him as a prisoner. What should we do in such a case?
Everyone knows the first step to a life of leisure and living off the government tit is to drive a truck for 17 years until one is laid off, then stand behind a cash register. Wish I’d thought of it first.