Washington State, where this occurred, does have an assisted suicide law, as do seven other states and the District of Columbia.
He does get government healthcare, Medicare. It’s seldom sufficient for all of your expenses.
Yes but in addition to medicare there is medicaid for those who need it. That’s what it’s for.
If you qualify. And even with both, medical costs can still be quite prohibitive.
He mentions his husband having an income, so that would likely count against his eligibility.
I didn’t know that.
The article didn’t mention that he had chosen the legal route. He called the police to say he was going to shoot himself, so this doesn’t sound like assisted suicide.
[Looks at own electric bill; is filled with envy.] It’s still obscene.
My story came out a lot better. After a rheumatoid arthritis crisis last year the doc started me on samples of Xeljan. I tolerated it well and it was effective so I looked it up on an online PDR. List price was $4,300 a month. :eek:
Last month he gave me another sample bottle and had me fill out a patient assistance form to send to Pfizer. Out of curiosity, I looked up what the co-pay would be under Medicare. A bargain at $1,300. A couple weeks later Pfizer called and said their co-pay was $1,100.
I told them that was better than Medicare, but even though the house is paid for I still have utilities and paying the co-pay would leave about $30 a month during the summer for things like, oh, food and gasoline. Winter would be a lot better, if I lasted that long.
They asked be to send in income statements so I faxed* them my various 1099s and W-2s. Three weeks ago they sent three-month supply for zero.
*Who da hell uses faxes any more? Governments and people who deal with them a lot, I guess.
Even if we accept the murderer’s reported justifications at absolute face value (and why should we?), I have a hard time believing that it’s legal in any state to have your wife killed because her disability is too expensive. It’s usually something that’s legal only when you’re terminally ill.
Even if she was fully on board with this*, the legal route was probably not available, depending on the exact nature of her illness.
*And my default position is very much that this should not be believed or accepted without a good deal of evidence, and that this should be treated as a dime-a-dozen case of a man abusing a vulnerable woman otherwise.
There seems to be a disconnect here. The statement was made that without his husband’s income he’d die. I’m questioning the logic of the statement. Without those financial resources he would go to medicaid.
I think it’s relevant to the story posted by the op.
Maybe, maybe not. I believe there’s a “benefits cliff” at the upper end of Medicaid eligibility. One dollar too much can set you back much more than a dollar.
Yes but if you have a negative cash flow then at some point you qualify.
That’s a pretty loaded statement. You call the man a murderer. Her certainly was. He undoubtedly murdered his wife. But calling him that excludes the possibility – or probability – that this was an assisted suicide. Then you say ‘have your wife killed’. Again, you’re putting the most negative connotation on it and excluding an assisted suicide.
I think you’re missing the point. Nobody is saying this was legal. The point is that people kill themselves every day due to desperation brought on by financial hardship. The point is that our for-profit healthcare system drove this couple to murder-suicide (or assisted suicide-suicide).
You don’t know it “drove the couple” to anything. That’s LF’s point. What if the wife was screaming at him to put down the gun, or was asleep and had no idea what he was up to?
You don’t know it went down that way, which LF is spinning in the most negative way. Based on similar events I’ve heard of in the past, I think it’s more likely it was an assisted suicide.
Yeah, when a woman is dead on the floor at the hands of her husband, I’m perfectly fine assuming that she was a victim and not a participant, until I see some clear and convincing evidence otherwise. I’m highly skeptical that there’s any demographic where suicide pacts are more common than domestic violence as a cause of death. And those “similar events” may well have been cases of flat-out murder, based on the other examples I posted of the media sympathising with caregivers-turned-killers.
A note in her handwriting asking people not to blame her husband would sure help. Wouldn’t you write something like that if you were a willing participant and did not want your beloved spouse to be forever remembered as a murderer?
…ha ha ha… >snort<… chuckle… thanks, I needed a good laugh!
Oh, wait - :smack: - maybe you’re serious.
No Medicaid isn’t always there for people who need it. It’s still the case that in some states an adult male without minor dependents can be completely denied medicaid no matter how sick he is.
There is NO guaranteed medical safety net for anyone in this country and the situation is worse for men than for women.
I have no dependents; it’d be near impossible for me to get Medicaid. Without my husband’s income I’d have to choose among food and insulin and water and electricity… not to mention over $2,000 annually in property taxes. I wish I were still physically able to work, but I’m not.
What kind of LaLa land do you live in, where everyone who needs help gets it?
I think that anyone who believes aid is easy to get has never had to apply for it.
Ditto for anyone who thinks what aid you can get is adequate.