This. Is. Fucking. OBSCENE.

[filkertom]

This is the state things have degenerated to in our country:

A 59-year-old man has been jailed in Gastonia, N.C., on charges of larceny after allegedly robbing an RBC Bank for $1 so he could get health care in prison. Richard James Verone handed a female teller a note demanding the money and claiming that he had a gun, according to the police report.

He then sat down and waited for police to arrive. "… I say, 'I'll be sitting right over here, on the chair, waiting for the police,'" Verone told reporters, recalling the June 9 robbery in an interview from Gaston County Jail.

And wait for the police, he did.

"He's sitting on the sofa as you walk in the front door," the bank teller said in a 911 call.

Police arrested Verone where he sat. He was unarmed.

Bankers have obscene profits and golden parachutes.

Members of Congress and their cronies have superb health care, paid for by us.

The insurance companies make money hand over fist.

And the rest of us are just fuckin' hosed.

To the point where it seems like a very reasonable, even responsible, choice to get yourself arrested for armed robbery, if only you can get the care you need.

THIS HAS GOT TO STOP.

We need single payer, and we need it NOW. We need the insurance companies, leeching off the country and doing nothing except taking money as middlemen, to go away NOW. We need the motherfuckers who broke our economy in prison, and we need it NOW. We need their too-big-to-fail banks to fuckin' FAIL, because if we can then by FSM they can.

Yeah, I know none of it's practical, and none of it will happen.

Fuck that.

If it doesn't happen eventually, our nation is doomed.

Comments

[smparadox.livejournal.com]

Amen! Or rather, Ramen! I couldn't agree more.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

I agree. Don't know how to get there though.

I wonder if some pointed satires with catchy tunes would do any good?

[melchar.livejournal.com]

So full of rage from reading that: to know that ANYONE feels they need to do this to remain healthy.

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

Sadly, this isn't new. 1991 was a pretty harsh winter in Tennessee, and I remember an article in the newspaper quoting a local caseworker who admitted she'd been advising her homeless clients to commit non-violent misdemeanors in order to get 30 days in jail, indoors, with heat, food, and basic health care.

[caraig.livejournal.com]

I fully agree. We need a better health care system, and for-profit isn't going to cut it.

Though you can count down the time until you get a post where someone says Verone was just too lazy to get a job....

[mdlbear]

Not the first case I've heard about; expect it to happen more often in the near future.

[wouldyoueva.livejournal.com]

Well, not a lot of healthcare in prison, but I guess it's better than nothing.

I wish someone would explain to me why letting this guy buy into Medicare at cost + 10% would be bad?

Meanwhile, if you can afford to go to a Major League Baseball game, check out who owns the skyboxes.

[holzman.livejournal.com]

You're assuming this guy can afford to buy into Medicare at cost + 10%, cost, or cost - 10%. Lots of folks can't.

[beldar.livejournal.com]

It's crossed my mind a lot lately that I might want to see about emigrating to Canada while I'm still a productive person (as it seems unfair just to try to "retire" there -- I'm sure they have laws against that). I know sooner or later the cancer will come back or I'll have something else that I know I can't afford. I shouldn't have have to think these things.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

My parents have been considering retiring to Canada. When your assets are good and you have a steady retirement income, it is a possibility.

[morpheus0013.livejournal.com]

You knew this was coming: Welcome to Obamacare: Man robs bank to get healthcare in jail (http://poorrichardsnews.com/post/6739800752/welcome-to-obamacare-man-robs-bank-to-get-healthcare).

[davidkingsley.livejournal.com]

Of course, he wouldn't have been any better off before. This sounds like a good argument for single payer health care.

[rowangolightly.livejournal.com]

Agreed. And here I am, at 56, a year of looking for a job and too healthy to get any sort of aid. Plus, being self-employed I *owed* taxes rather that getting any back. No health care, no savings, no investments but damned fucking lucky that I have sewing skills to make a living or else I'd be on the street.

[bayushisan.livejournal.com]

Things are only going to change when certain media *cough cough Fox News cough cough* stop fear mongering people about single payer. They complain and whine about the democrats using "mediscare" when talking about the Ryan Plan, which amounts to telling people what it actually does, and outright lie about their being death panels in the Democratic plan.

(No Hannity the Ryan Plan does not save Medicare, it turns it into a voucher system)

It is pantently offensive that the Republicans want to throw the poor and the elderly under the bus, but until the liberals in congress and the senate grow some balls that's what is going to continue to happen.

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

WHAT liberals in Congress?!!

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

Homeless guys started doing this kind of thing twenty years ago. It's just got worse since then. Now you have a woman and her kids out there, and they can't even get arrested to get some shelter in lousy dangerous weather. I work downtown, I ain't fooled.
This is NOT unique to this country. Wealthy elite classes all around the world have been enriching themselves and sucking property ownership out of the upper and middle classes since Reagan was in office, we've all seen the obscene stats on that stuff.
And you know what the war on women is about? Turns out that's about breaking down stubborn uppity centers of community organization who object to people ripping off their communities, and get people motivated. The grammoms, man. In some countries militias are encouraged to attack them directly. In others, the media tries to tear down the respect given them and ridicule them so their warnings get ignored. Something like the shooting of Giffords meshes right in with that whole threat/bully/tear down spectrum.
So guess what I'm expecting to come out of the radical right next?

http://www.ontheissuesmagazine.com/2011summer/2011summer_suskind.php

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

And yet if you dare to point any of this out - this nonstop war on women - YOU'RE the bad one for Being A Man-Hater (which apparently is worse than being a woman-genocider). That's if you're a woman. If you're a man, you're a (what's that cute non-misogynist term again? Oh yeah) mangina, or a pussy.

[alverant.livejournal.com]

Healthcare should not be a for-profit business. Hell all insurance shouldn't be for profit. Making it for-profit just invites abuse from the companies to use any excuse to deny claims.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/02/13-2
They [insurance companies] simply don’t want to pay. They are in business to make money, as are the banks. Providing some sort of service is an irritating necessity. The less actually provided, the more successful these businesses are.

[caraig.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

The health care industry is the only industry in the world that makes a profit when it DOESN'T provide a service, and they will do EVERYTHING they can to keep from providing as much service as they can.

Why is this so hard for even authoritarians to graps?

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

Tom: if you should ever run for president, you have my vote.

I worked in a convenience store in Boulder, CO in 1980. Lot of undomiciled clients of every description came in. Word was, if you wanted to break into jail for the night, one of the better ways was to eat at Denny's, without regard for the prices, then claim to have forgotten your wallet. They had a policy of calling the cops - a lot of restaurants will let a person slide in that situation - and you'd get at least a week of food and shelter on top of one halfway decent (I know, matter of opinion) meal.

Utah Phillips often came to do a gig in Denver shortly after an election. He'd always ask, "Are you happy with what you got?" It always got a laugh.

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

The problem with Single-payer is that it would have to rely on the same corrupt Senators and Representatives that you're complaining about earlier in the post to implement it and keep it funded.

It's not going to happen, at least not in a way that doesn't shunt money from the 75% of the people who still have some kind of job into the pockets of corporate officials.

The country (as I've said for the past five years) that we grew up in is gone. The biggest questions are how to insure that at least one of the pieces that the country splits into is a decent place for us to live in and how to insure that there's a minimum of violence during the collapse.

Tom Trumpinski

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

Maybe single-payer would work if we got the mafia to operate it. They seem to have a better understanding of how to operate a successful business than the govt. And a better-defined moral code.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Someone tell me why the hell there hasn't been a revolution yet?

I mean, it's obvious to everyone by now that your government has been hijacked, and the fanatics at the controls are trying to fly it into the ground. Ok, you elected a new flight crew...and obviously that hasn't made any difference because the hijackers are still in control.

So, when does some one say 'lets roll"?

[zellion.livejournal.com]

Straight up? Not enough of us have nothing left to lose yet.

I'm struggling but I have a roof over my head and a family to think about. Who knows what kind of shit would go down post-revolution? See how well Egypt has done?

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

You know how the Repubs are going to spin this, right?

"The jails are so soft bums go there deliberately to get health care on the taxpayer's tab; we need to make jail tougher."

[antinomic.livejournal.com]

A second American Revolution! A new government. A new currency. And the new government is not responsible for the old government's debts.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

We already had that, actually, in 1787. This is why we live under the Constitution instead of the Articles of Confederation. That said, though, even back then the new government said it was fully responsible for all the debts of the old one. This had two effects:
1) the rich who would have been out money got to keep being rich; and
2) it established the US Government as being good for its debts, paying on time and in full.

The reason the current debt ceiling shouting match is such a big deal is that, should the debt ceiling not be raised, it would be the very first time the US Government has not paid its debts on time and in full. This would have enormous repercussions for the nation. Banks would lend at higher rates because their cost to borrow would go up; this would stifle mortgages and business loans alike. I should point out that one of the problems of the Great Depression was an inability for people to get credit. The GOP is proposing making things worse for everybody if they do not get their way to make things worse for most of us.

Done yesterday (20110620 Mo)

[pingback-bot.livejournal.com]

User mdlbear referenced to your post from Done yesterday (20110620 Mo) (http://mdlbear.livejournal.com/1352746.html) saying: [...] * YD to school * short walk: to Metro (with a coworker) @ filkertom: This. Is. Fucking. OBSCENE. [...]

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

Our nation was doomed the day the Clintons decided the best way to advance liberal goals was to get conservative Democrats elected to office, rather than push for liberal Democrats who might have less of a chance of election.

Now we have a divided and cowardly Democratic Party, and a united and fascist Republican Party- and a system purposefully designed to ensure no viable alternative can arise.

[alverant.livejournal.com]

I'd back up to Reagan who did a lot to create the partisan divide and recreate the GOP into today's collection of loons and control freaks. Plus Reagan did things like support religious fundamentalism and terrorists, deregulated industries, gutted environmental laws and enforcement of those laws, etc etc etc. At least you could say Clinton made a mistake. Reagan did what he did deliberately for the sake of power. We make fun of the name Darth Cheney, but we shouldn't forget Emperor Reagan-tine.

I just do not get it!?

[morvab.livejournal.com]

I'm a Canadian. This story makes me sick, as I am sure it does all of you. But as a Canadian, I just cannot understand why some reasonable form of "socialized" medicine appears to be such unthinkable anathema to so many Americans. (I realize I am preaching to the choir here, but let me vent!)
Yes, there are some problems with all of the socialized health care systems around the world. Because it does not come out of your own pocket perhaps there is a bit more abuse of the system. And here in Canada, we tend to have long waiting lists for many types of specialists for non urgent conditions because we just don't have enough of them, so it can sometimes take several months to see a particular specialist. (the reason that we have such a shortage is too many of them emigrate to the US where they can make a million dollars or more per year, instead of the modest $250 - 300,000 our doctors get by on!)
But despite those issues, if you are in crisis you will get the tests and specialists you need quite fast, and I do not know ANYONE who has ever not gone to a doctor or hospital because they couldn't afford the care. It is just unthinkable here.
Why is this such a bad thing that it causes Republicans (including a cousin of mine in Georgia) to start foaming at the lips until they fall over backward? Anyone care to explain, in 25 words or less?

Twenty-Five Of My Words, For What They're Worth

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

People should pull themselves up by their bootstraps. The poor don't deserve help. It's their own fault for being poor. Government stifles The Glorious Free Market.

[ka-klick.livejournal.com]

Reminded me of this:

http://www.classicreader.com/book/1757/1/

[pseud0sapien.livejournal.com]

Socialized medicine (like we have up here in the Frozen North) is not all wine and roses. Instead of dealing with an insurer or just paying cash, you end up trying to convince a bureaucrat that you are needy enough to be put on a (long) waiting list, then hoping you don't die before your number comes up. It's about as wasteful and corrupt as any government program, and we have a little que-jumping scandal here in Alberta right now. Not saying I like the yankee system any better, but our pursuit of adequacy leaves little room for excellence.
And saying your nation is doomed sounds a bit alarmist. You folks have somehow staggered along for 235 years without it, and if you're doomed by anything, it's your recent abandonment of habeas corpus.

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

But how... How did it get to the point where we not only ACCEPT this, but ENCOURAGE this?

Are we just that stupid?

And if we are... Maybe we DESERVE to be screwed?

[fionn320.livejournal.com]

Sadly, this is nothing new. Back in 2005, about the time I started being a letter carrier in California, there was a case in Georgia where a man shot his mail carrier in order to keep from getting further in medical debt.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8575712/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/t/faced-debt-ga-man-shoots-postal-worker/

Fortunately, the letter carrier survived.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty much naive about such things but the USA ... scares me. As an Australian I've always known that if I was unemployed I'd get basic welfare. And if I was sick I'd receive aid through the public health system. There's lots of complaints about our Medicare and the hospital waiting lists but it's always done the trick for me, the times I've broken bones or whatever and had a trip to the nearest emergency room.

What would be the story in the US? I find it hard to believe the most powerful country on the planet doesn't give such basic necessities to its own citizens. Private enterprise gone crazy. Brrrr.