Thursday, November 08, 2007

Hipsters Without Health Care: The Continuing Series

Via Gawker , from musician Scott Matthews:

"A hand specialist informed me today that if I don't have surgery within a week, I will lose complete use of my finger. This means I cannot play guitar. I have surgery scheduled for Monday, November 13, but unfortunately I don't have health insurance. In total, it's going to cost me at least $7000. Because of this circumstance, the next two shows - November 19 & November 20- will be benefits for surgical costs. Any donations will be greatly appreciated."

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Don't you know? All you have to do is get Britney Spears to run over your hand with her car, then go to the Emergency Room where everyone goes to get their health care now.

Anonymous said...

It never ceases to amaze me, when people don't take care of their own lives, and then expect others to cover them.

Health costs are very real, you will get sick, you will get injured. Medical treatment for these inevitable things will cost real money.

If you choose not save for this, not to accomodate for this, not participate in a medical discount or insruance program, then yes you will have to pay full price for the medical treatment you need.

Not us, we do not have to pay full price for your medical treatment, you do. This should be no surprise, when did the world promise it would pay your bills?

I'm afraid my generation needs a deep wake up call to grow up.

Anonymous said...

Is anything quite as simple as anonymous thinks? Clearly s/he has the means to save for healthcare insurance. There are some who are not so lucky.

In Europe no-one has to pay for healthcare. They really can 'expect others to cover them'. Yet they are not communists - but democratic economically successful countries.

Unknown said...

Um most people could never save enough money to pay for medical treatment or diagnostics given the skyrocketing costs today. And how exactly does emergency care work via pure capitalism - choose which doctor will sew you up the cheapest while you're unconscious and bleeding?

What my generation really needs is a deep wake up call to fight for universal, single-payer healthcare. Yes, the evil socialized medicine you've all been so brainwashed about. Universal means we have a common risk pool, and single-payer means the government uses our taxes to pay for our privately-delivered care. Therefore, you are still paying for your care, just via taxes through our government, instead of via premiums through insanely profitable, murder-by-spreadsheet health insurance corporations.

We can argue all day about how nobody likes to go to the DMV and how you have to wait for elective surgery in Canada, because I will always come back with how much better it is to get served in your turn than not get served at all, such as we have with the you're-uninsurable, that-procedure-is-experimental crowd.

I sure like my socialized fire and police departments, and public education and roads. It sure would suck to not be able to depend on something as essential to life as having firefighters to save you and your house from burning without having to mortgage it to pay the bill, but that's exactly what we're doing by letting highway bandits run our healthcare system. People are starting to become medical refugees, traveling to far-off climes for affordable surgical procedures. They're losing their homes and all hope of a better life. If that isn't killing the American Dream, I don't know what is!