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EFF Co-Founder Announces Benefit Concert to Pay His Medical Bills (twitter.com)
An anoymous Slashdot reader reports:
"I was dead for about 8 mins. on Wed. eve," EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow posted last year on Facebook. "total cardiac arrest...sad to report, no Ascending Light." The cyber-rights activist told the San Francisco Chronicle that he had gone "down the tunnel of eternity and it turned out to be a cheap carnival ride." He paused for a moment. "Probably not cheap, though."
Yesterday Barlow posted a Twitter update announcing a big benefit concert in Mill Valley, California to help pay his mounting medical bills on Monday, October 24th. Performers will include Bob Weir (also of The Grateful Dead), Jerry Harrison (of The Talking Heads), Lukas Nelson, Members of The String Cheese Incident, Sean Lennon and Les Claypool, plus 85-year-old folk singer Ramblin' Jack Elliott, as well as "special guests."
Barlow's family describes the last 18 months as a "medical incarceration" with "a dizzying array of medical events and complications" that has depleted his savings and insurance benefits. They've also set up a site for donations from "his fellow innovators, artists, cowboys, and partners-in-crime, to help us provide the quality of care necessary for Barlow's recovery."
Yesterday Barlow posted a Twitter update announcing a big benefit concert in Mill Valley, California to help pay his mounting medical bills on Monday, October 24th. Performers will include Bob Weir (also of The Grateful Dead), Jerry Harrison (of The Talking Heads), Lukas Nelson, Members of The String Cheese Incident, Sean Lennon and Les Claypool, plus 85-year-old folk singer Ramblin' Jack Elliott, as well as "special guests."
Barlow's family describes the last 18 months as a "medical incarceration" with "a dizzying array of medical events and complications" that has depleted his savings and insurance benefits. They've also set up a site for donations from "his fellow innovators, artists, cowboys, and partners-in-crime, to help us provide the quality of care necessary for Barlow's recovery."
Seriously, complain as much as you want about it, socialized health care is the best thing a country can do for its people.
That and actually regulating the pricing on medical hardware/drugs, it's ridiculously overpriced in the US compared to the same service in say, Canada, without insurances.
The Affordable Care Act did a couple of things - dropped the 'pre existing condition' clause for private insurance (if you're sick, we aren't going to cover you, but you're certainly welcome to pay into the program in the event you get some other illness down the road - while you're still healthy enough to pay the premium), made insurers create lower (not low by any means) marginally useful insurance policies and tried to force everyone to get some sort of medical insurance. It also gave insurers the ability to lock in double digit profits for another decade. And gave me even more reasons to write run on sentences.
We don't know just what insurance he had (TFS implies that he had some) but if he had a standard commercial policy with a 1-2 million dollar limit, let me point out two interesting points:
- A year long illness can easily kick you into the million dollar club. A bad MI, a couple of weeks in the ICU, a couple more weeks in a step down unit, rehab, a few more procedures, a couple of expensive drugs and a host of billing errors and you're there. Hell, I'm an ER doc and I can run up $100,000 easy peasy. That's for the first couple of HOURS.
- MOST insurances have a 20% copay. Crappy ones don't drop the copay until you get to the quarter million dollar range although most have an out of pocket limit of at most $10,000 or so.
So, lets say he had 'OK' insurance. He's limited to $10K out of pocket plus an enormous number of 'little' expenses. Things that weren't covered, billing errors (did I mention that before>?), lost time, wages, home assistance, family issues .....
He's a lawyer, but probably not that kind of lawyer that has 20K sitting in his savings account.
Yeah, the money goes fast. The most popular thing at our local Elk's Club is drinking, the next most popular is various fund raisers for somebody or others medical bills.
USA! USA! USA!
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Exactly right. The anti-competitiveness of hospital, drug, and doctor prices in the USA is the problem.
Nobody else gets away with charging these prices without disclosing them up front. (Try that with car repairs)
Nobody else gets away with charging different prices based on how you pay. (Try that with car repairs)
Nobody else gets away with forcing you to buy 'protection' from the racket. (aka health insurance)
Nobody else gets away with doing it under duress.
They are criminals!
How utterly barbaric is the USA ? One of the most technologically advanced societies on the planet yet you can die because you have no money and are unfortunate enough to need medical treatment..
And all you stupid brainwashed Yanks claim your health care is better than the rest of the world ? Really ? You must love the taste of that Kool aid.
Oh sorry I forgot socialism (or all joining in to do something together) = bad in your tiny minds.
Thank fuck I live in England where we have the utterly civilized NHS. Thankfully I've been lucky enough (so far) to only pay into the system without needing much myself but I know people who've needed treatment, sometimes quite expensive treatment, and I'm proud to say that my taxes helped pay for them. I will be happy to spend my whole life paying into the NHS without ever needing it myself.
Your American medical "system" is a fucking joke. It's like something out of the middle ages.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
> You have inferior care that gets people killed.
Holy shit, it's a real in the flesh idiot who has bought the US healthcare astroturf hook line and sinker. You don't live here, you don't use our system and yet you feel comfortable slinging bullshit like that around?
> You have arbitrary limits on expensive care that are a death sentence.
We don't no. But do look into US healthcare providers' lifetime limits and until the ACA those "preexisting conditions".
> You don't develop the interesting new treatments.
Horse. Shit. Insulin, Rhogam, the Salk polio vaccine trial, T - cells, AIDS medications, the ebola vaccine, etc.
You should really educate yourself. You're kind of an embarrassment.
Hi random internet person. The WHO who isn't some random person on a forum rank Canada 7 nations ahead of the USA in its global rankings. These include first and foremost the quality of life (ability to live, ability to live well, and ability to receive healthcare).
So... You're talking out of your arse.
Thanks. That is all.
There are several areas in which the USA provides world class care. To the rich. In most areas, it's rather depressing to look at the figures though.
Here is the summary from a report by The Commonwealth Fund, which was set up to improve healthcare in the USA in 1918: US healthcare from a global perspective
Highlights:
- High U.S. health care spending due to greater use of medical technology, health care prices
- U.S. spends more on health care than other high-income countries but has worse outcomes
- Health care spending as % of gross GDP, USA vs Canada: 17.1% versus 10.7% (2013)
Some causes:
"Data published by the International Federation of Health Plans suggest that hospital and physician prices for procedures were highest in the U.S. in 2013.10 The average price of bypass surgery was $75,345 in the U.S. This is more than $30,000 higher than in the second-highest country, Australia, where the procedure costs $42,130. According to the same data source, MRI and CT scans were also most expensive in the U.S. While these pricing data are subject to significant methodological limitations, they illustrate a pattern of significantly higher prices in many areas of U.S. health care.
Other studies have observed high U.S. prices for pharmaceuticals. A 2013 investigation by Kanavos and colleagues created a cross-national price index for a basket of widely used in-patent pharmaceuticals. In 2010, all countries studied had lower prices than the U.S. In Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, prices were about 50 percent lower.11"
But perhaps, if you pay more, you get more?
"On several measures of population health, Americans had worse outcomes than their international peers. "
Okay, but we know a lot of Americans have been smoking more than other folks, and are more... big-boned. Right?
"The Institute of Medicine found that poorer health in the U.S. was not simply the result of economic, social, or racial and ethnic disadvantages—even well-off, nonsmoking, nonobese Americans appear in worse health than their counterparts abroad."
But cancer care is top notch in the USA.
"One area where the U.S. appeared to have comparatively good health outcomes was cancer care. Other research based on survival rates also suggests that U.S. cancer care is above average, though these studies are disputed on methodological grounds."
However: "The opposite trend appears for ischemic heart disease, where the U.S. had among the highest mortality rates in 2013—128 per 100,000 population compared with 95 in the median OECD country."
To summarize: if you state that Canada has inferior care (imploying that it goes across the board), despite research suggesting the opposite is true, I'd like to see citations.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
From the HHS website:
So the point remains - there are no annual or lifetime limits allowed by law.
What this suggests is that Barlow is pursuing medically questionable treatments that insurance won't cover, and is asking everybody to pay for his experimental medical journey. Good luck to him, but I'm having trouble mustering a lot of sympathy for his financial straits.
I've just helped get my mother in law (who recently immigrated from Russia) a health care plan... I've been eyeballs-deep in health plan fine print, and there are very reasonable out-of-pocket annual limits on all of these plans, so I'm not exactly sure how he's managing to financially ruin himself, when my mother in law (who is a retired office worker on a ~250 dollar per month russian pension) can get health care that offers her something like a 5k yearly out of pocket maximum. For a lawyer, 5k yearly should not mean financial ruin. My wife and I have decent IT jobs, and support our two kids plus her parents, and 5k yearly wouldn't be ruin for us.