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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."
On one hand, this guy has done more for humanity than most, given he's a founder of the EFF, which is fighting the good fight around internet based human rights.
On the other, most people don't get to have their own "benefit concert" when they rack up big medical bills. (Yeah, yeah, I'm sure the US healtlh care system will be hashed within an inch of its life in this thread).
So... are some people more deserving than others, based on what they've accomplished? They're asked for voluntary contributions, and shit I'm inclined, given all what the org he started has done, but is preferential treatment really a good idea?
life without steak and ice cream sucks but death is worse.
Lies!
In America, we put the dollar sign before EVERYTHING else.
Dozens of countries have solved the problems in the second paragraph by taxing unhealthy shit higher to offset healthcare costs and through encouraging people to volunteer organ donation by educating them loudly on the good you can do after death. The better countries also heavily regulate advertising of unhealthy things, funding healthy eating and exercise programmes and providing preventative healthcare. In these places, the libertarian "anyone should be able to persuade anyone into becoming addicted to anything" is considered a crude first approximation to a working society. Unfortunately, the US is still quite close to that attitude, which is fundamentalist to the point of religious (as an ex Eastern European, reminds me of Soviet Marxism, except the "god" is the Invisible Hand instead of dialectical materialism).
> I won't outright object to a single-payer tax supported medical system, but it's pretty obvious that we'd need to put some rules into place as it's not financially viable to provide the unlimited care that people are capable of consuming.
And yet countries like Canada where I live have a lower healthcare spend per capita, we have a longer life expectancy, and nobody here goes bankrupt from medical conditions. The problem in the US isn't that the people will "consume too much healthcare", the problem is you have a system built where several levels of companies have their hands out to gouge as much as they can. In the US the hospitals and the insurance companies negotiate prices for everything and with several companies in the mix everyone wants (and gets) their piece. In Canada, we have a single payer system where the government runs a board of doctors who determine what a procedure should cost and that is what a doctor or hospital will be paid for that procedure or visit. Period.
>The most obvious are that taxpayers shouldn't be forced to subsidize the consequences if your unhealthy lifestyle.
Hello slippery slope. What's an unhealthy lifestyle? Obesity sure, same with smoking and drinking. But what about other things? Play football, hockey, basketball? Go skydiving, rock climbing, biking or kayaking? Skiing? Construction? All of those activities and more can lead to very expensive injuries. If premiums go up for unhealthy lifestyles, why not risky ones too? Hell for that matter what about using a car, driver or passenger? Statistically the average person will be in 2.7 significant car accidents in their lifetime. So really if you use vehicles it's not a matter of if, but when you will become a burden to your healthcare provider. Better bump those peoples' premiums too....
The most obvious are that taxpayers shouldn't be forced to subsidize the consequences if your unhealthy lifestyle. If you smoke and get lung cancer, tough shit. Drink and ruin your liver, same deal. Obesity related medical issues are your own responsibility as well. Also, mandatory requirement that if you want to use the system, you're automatically an organ donor. Throw in some tax deductions (or alternatively just higher taxes for anyone who wouldn't get the "deduction") for people who generally try to stay in reasonable health and it's a reasonable system.
At this point I think it would be wise to point out that everybody dies sometime, somehow and old people tend to have a lot of medical problems. Most people dying from "lifestyle diseases" make it through most their taxable income years, if you drop dead from cardiac arrest at 60 you're still probably cheaper than a fitness freak that goes down fighting at 90 after a decade of deteriorating health going in and out of hospital. And to put it bluntly, very often it doesn't matter how or when it's a matter of whether there's something to be done. I've heard stories of apparently healthy people going to bed and simply not waking up, game over. Very cheap, very easy just issue the death certificate and move on. Others are caught in critical condition and spend days or weeks on the brink of death. There's a huge, huge variation that means the risk and payout won't correlate well no matter what you do.
The other part is, do you really want a society counting the number of beers and smoke and BMI and any risky or stupid activity you do? Orwell would love it, but no just no. I think you should realized that the main reason it won't get crazy abused is that being sick and injured is not fun and generally painful and uncomfortable. And you will spend a lot of time waiting in line unless you're in critical need and in general, you just don't cut yourself to get a free band-aid. Not when it's only going to be put on a bleed wound, it's not like you can keep them and sell them. Now benefits, there's a lot of fraud with disability benefits, a little with some highly regulated drugs that are monitored carefully... but healthcare in general? People are there because they need it, not because they want to.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Marathon runners get heart attacks, and folks who eat healthy get cancers too. Illness isn't always "your fault". You could cross the street today, look both ways, in a crosswalk and green light, and get seriously messed up by an uninsured and stolen car. just sayin...
do you actually live in the US ? this is a shit country to be poor in.