Good anecdote for progressives (conservatives?)

A couple of months ago Verone started weighing his options.

He considered turning to a homeless shelter and seeking medical help through charitable organizations.

Then he had another idea: commit a crime and get set up with a place to stay, food and doctors.

He started planning.

As his bank account depleted and the day of execution got closer, Verone sold and donated his furniture. He paid his last month’s rent and gave his notice.

He moved into the Hampton Inn for the last couple of days. Then on June 9 he followed his typical morning routine of getting ready for the day.

He took a cab down New Hope Road and picked a bank at random — RBC Bank.

Verone didn’t want to scare anyone. He executed the robbery the most passive way he knew how.

He handed the teller a note demanding one dollar, and medical attention.

The story is interesting throughout, here is another bit:

The ideal scenario would include back and foot surgery and a diagnosis and treatment of the protrusion on his chest, he said. He would serve a few years in prison and get out in time to collect Social Security and move to the beach.

The link is here (could he have signed up for the high-risk pool?) and for the link I thank J.T. Kounelias.

Comments

If he didn't qualify for medicaid, what will change Obamacare? he will be put in an exchange, that he can't afford. I think he is in for a rude awakening with prison medical care, his best bet would have been charity.

You are correct. In law school, some friends of mine did habeas/inmate rights-type work. At least here in California, inmates get terrible health care, and their ailments are often ignored for long periods of time.

You are both correct. I am in law school and doing prison-related work this summer, and the medical care sucks, and problems are often ignored. My understanding is that prisoners really, really do not want to have an ailment that requires them to go to the off-site prison-system hospital. This is in Massachusetts, which seems to be slightly less financially screwed than California.

Medicaid currently does not require States to cover individuals, only couples and adult plus dependent child are required for a State to get Federal Medicaid matching funds. ACA pays the full cost (for x years) of expanding Medicaid to individuals and the working poor, so he would have gotten the medical care you get if this was 2014.

Getting charity care requires finding a hospital or clinic that provides charity care, unless he is at risk of dying.

He would have been better off to spend his last few dollars going into redneck bars and loudly attacking Palin or Reagan or Patsy Cline, or making sexual advances to macho men so he was beaten up, trying to get punched in the chest and stomped in the foot. Maybe he would end up in a coma for a couple of years, coming out when he qualifies for Social Security and Medicare.

Ah the danger of ignoring marginal tax rates.

It is also funny that his list of ailments seems like nothing that medical care can fix. Back surgery ha! The protrusion on his chest might be operable.

Hey if this catches on prison may not be such a terrible palace.

Counterpoint: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/576074/201106211840/A-Phony-Tale-Of-Woe.htm

I wish I could say any of that was a surprise.

You can bet this story goes worldwide without an ounce of that context. Barack Obama will probably use it on the campaign trail. Ugh, I hate our media.

Counter-counterpoint: the editorial board of IBD, as well as many readers of this blog, are very quick to bemoan the free rider problem of the current American healthcare system, and rightly so. Managing one's health by (unpaid) emergency room visits is a huge contributor to exploding healthcare costs. Yet the proposed solution to a case like this is.... become a free rider?

Charity care != emergency room care, and even more generally, charity care != free rider.

Actually its a tiny part of overall health spending.

Loser. Just move to a welfare state and live on the streets for a few months to get residency. And I think he's in for a rude awakening if he thinks he's getting state-funded surgery in prison because his back hurts. He'll be out of prison before the litigation on that issue is through.
Also, his story doesn't read like robbery was his last resort, but first.

"Just move to a welfare state and live on the streets for a few months to get residency."

Darlin', it really doesn't work that way.

Sound like one of those "too good to check" stories.

Exactly what I was thinking (without the catchy phrase).

Somebody obviously watched "Going in Style."

It is simply a case of marginal utility and opportunity cost. The utility of the prison system may be only marginally better than the streets, but that is all it takes. His opportunity cost is essentially zero since he had no other opportunity, at least on the free market.

Except that...
1) he did have other opportunities
2) the market is not free or anything even vaguely close

He's old, burned out and marginally skilled. It was this or file a spurious tort or comp claim.

Now if it was me, I'd just buy a lot of marijuana seeds and start growing. I'd have plenty of analgesic for my geriatric ailments and could sell the rest. Maybe even make a living off it. If the government arrests me, I get three hots and a cot at taxpayer expense.

Sounds like a plan.

He's quite far from a medical marijuana state, but if he could make it to one of these western anti-prohibition states (like my home of Montana), he could do handily. Of course our new Tea Party inspired medical laws are completely anti-market. Makes no sense.

The funniest part is that a dollar is petite larceny. He's going to get a slap on the wrist or a few weeks in jail at best.

Tyler-

Congratulations! You beat Matt and Ezra to this one.

"He considered turning to a homeless shelter and seeking medical help through charitable organizations."

And then...? What happened? Plan A seemed a lot more reasonable than Plan Bankrobbery.

Did he make any attempt to get a loan?

He invented his own "public option".

"Did he make any attempt to get a loan?"

LOL! Good one ...

a loan? from who? he was broke, unemployed and sick.

Charities make these kinds of loans. So do family members, close friends, etc. If he got a job, he might even get one from a bank.

Of course, all this is pretty superfluous given that he appears to have been eligible for all sorts of aid.

"...he refused to be a burden on his sister and brothers."

But being a burden on the prison system or country taxpayers wasn't a problem for him. If it's morally out of bounds to burden his family, why is morally acceptable to burden strangers via socialized medical care? Not once did the article mention how much the "ideal" treatment would cost. Did he seek out medical care but was turned away? Does he know how much the procedures would cost?

Based on the evidence provided in the article alone, he most certainly did NOT explore all his options before choosing his criminal stunt.

J

"he most certainly did NOT explore all his options": heartless bastard - how dare he?

Well, before turning to crime and being a burden on taxpayers, yeah, we do kinda sorta expect a decent person might at least investigate other means of achieving his goal.

Like those teaching hospitals, charities, and so on. And maybe even asking his family for help.

The guy is an idiot. What a shocker. As for the moral dimensions, that isn't so tough. If I had to choose between killing myself, my brother or a stranger I'd probably pop the stranger.

This is huge advantage of this aspect of socialized services. Lots of people pay a smaller amount, rather than a tiny number of people paying a large amount. You may find it reprehensible, but many disagree. Broad, society-wide cost sharing is something many of us support.

Just another case of "irreconcilable value differences."

Isn't it better to say that his actual strategy was to execute a huge publicity stunt in the hopes that would help draw attention to his plight?

I agree. The story I read yesterday mentioned that he planned to apply for Social Security upon release but didn't mention (as this one may?) whether he had applied for SSDI. It's not entirely clear he had, or that he had looked at any other options. I know that when I broke my back at one job (no insurance, and no workman's comp) and looked into my options through TX's county health extensions, there was a fully free option as well as a variety of reduced fee and deferred payment plans.

I see that the linked article makes him look a little more politically engaged than the previous one I had read. In addition, similar to what others have said RE: prison medical care, I wonder how he'll feel after he realizes that the medical attention he has received (of which he brags) to date is simply check-in procedure--so that if he dies of any of these conditions, they'll be listed as pre-existing.

Like most of these stories, it serves to confirm the beliefs that most people acquire by the age of fifteen. This is true for all values of "belief".

High risk pools are far from free, and far from automatic - enrollment is limited by available funding. In my state, that's about 8000 people, then you're out of luck. And you have to have been uninsured for 6 months, which makes the whole idea kind of a joke. How many people with high risk conditions can survive for 6 months without medical care?

I applied, and was rejected despite a letter from a cardiologist. No matter - my premium would have been ~$450/month.

A better question here would be what value freedom really has to those who have nothing else but.

Wow! $450 a month is cheap. I pay almost $900 a month for standard risk on a $5000 deductible policy, in effect for over 8 years in free market limited regulation low tax NH.

Premium increases of about 10% have occurred every July beginning 2003. Obviously the insurers knew Obamacare was going to be signed into law in 2010 back in 2003!

The NH State insurance commission is seeking waivers on the ACA 80% of policy premiums going to medical care arguing that their 65% standard is stricter than HHS's stand and is the equivalent to 70% by the HHS standard which should be good enough to meet the ACA 80% requirement for individual policies.

How many people with high risk conditions can survive for 6 months without medical care?

Most of us? And you're confusing medical care with insurance. And they've only managed to sign up a small fraction of the people to the new high risk pools, so there's plenty of money left.

I like reading these responses because they really reflect more on the reader than on the story itself. The story is quite vague; we know little about his man. We don't know his exact education, medical condition, family history, employment history, and all the small steps he took before he decided on prison medicine. This is to some degrees true of all personal narratives to some degree but in this case it is largely true that we know next to nothing about this particular case. So any judgements on our part reflect our own disposition rather than any insightful analysis. So I enjoy reading people's personal biases. You can see that on a right leaning economics blog people will react quite negatively to this story. I suspect that conservative leaning people tend to have a just world outlook or a social darwinian outlook and will react negatively no matter what small details arise. On the other hand on a left leaning economics blog this will show the faults in our heartless system and the need for comprehensive reform, no matter what small details arise that could cast a shadow on this man's claims.

OTOH, some people like to look down from the Olympian heights and scoff at the biased opinions of mere mortals. Sure beats having to weigh in with an opinion.

A follow up from the same paper that reported the story: http://www.gastongazette.com/news/media-58545-verone-bank.html

"Donna Grissom is a local reader who felt compelled to contact the newspaper, and Verone.

Grissom, executive director of HealthNet Gaston, checked records to see if the nonprofit had ever turned Verone away for assistance. He was not on the books.

But Verone’s case did spark a reaction from Grissom. She went to the Gaston County Sheriff’s Office to distribute information about HealthNet Gaston.

Grissom said she wants Verone and everyone in need to know that there are programs available.

“There are resources,” she said. “You don’t have to go and rob a bank to get health care in Gaston County.”
:
Grissom said she sympathizes with Verone but hopes people will explore all their options before resorting to such radical methods for help.

Tackling each person’s health needs who live below the poverty level isn’t possible, but HealthNet will stretch its dollars to make an attempt, she said.

“We do not have the capacity to serve all 33,000 people in Gaston County who would qualify for our program, but we’re serving about 2,250 right now and we’ve got room for more,” she said."

Meanwhile in the UK, he would have gone to his GP for free. Surgery he might have had to wait up to 18 months for, but it sounds like he's been waiting a lot longer than that.

18 weeks is the maximum for any treatment, one month for cancer. You are thinking of counter-america, that evil mutant country where the evil statists carry out their evil anti-freedom policies that prove the free market solves everything.

Interesting that Verone chose to offset the financial burden of his problems to taxpayers rather than his brother. Ultimately we are all our brother's keeper. We depend on each other for survival.

Health care is best solved at the community level where people are more willing to help each other. Offloading one's problems to anonymous taxpayers is ultimately irresponsible. Physicians and patients are bypassing bureaucracy and designing ideal clinics & hospitals that provide ideal health care for all:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YJz5wvt2bk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtEFIFqhw6I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoUfA2Yp8uQ

The revolution is happening. Tune in.
We are the saviors we have been waiting for.

Pamela Wible MD

Percieved benefits vs. actual benefits appear to be the issue. The robber percieved prison and its "free" medical service as something it clearly is not.

No different than people percieving welfare as a better alternative than working. Or people percieving Obamacare as something it is not.

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