EFF Co-Founder Announces Benefit Concert to Pay His Medical Bills (twitter.com) 21
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."
Why not covered by insurance? (Score:1)
Hi there. I don't know much about the US health care system, but shouldn't the Affordable Care Act have fixed that? How can that happen, that he still has huge medical bills? Can somebody please explain?
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"Affordable" in the Affordable Care Act is very much akin to "unlimited" in unlimited bandwidth in a mobile phone contract. It's not so much an adjective as it is a branding label.
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"Affordable" in the Affordable Care Act is very much akin to "unlimited" in unlimited bandwidth in a mobile phone contract. It's not so much an adjective as it is a branding label.
Still. Every insurance plan has an out-of-pocket maximum and the law prevents life-time limits on benefits. While it's possible for deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums to be quite high, I'm dubious about the claim, "depleted his savings and insurance benefits" -- unless he's not good at managing his own money. To be fair, the summary did say this happened over 18 months, so there could be some cost build up due to his case exceeding a calendar year and the deductible and out-of-pocket fees being reset
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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 abili
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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 $10K out of pocket plus an enormous number of 'little' expenses. Things that weren't covered, billing errors (did I mention that before>?), lost time, wages, home assistance, family issues .....
He's a lawyer, but probably not that kind of lawyer that has 20K sitting in his savings account.
Yeah, the money goes fast. The most popular thing at our local Elk's Club is drinking, the next most popular is various fund raisers for somebody or others medical bills.
USA! USA! USA!
So maybe lead the charge as an ER Doc to bring those costs down? 100,000$ for a few hours? That's criminal, nothing on Earth can possibly cost that much without someone committing a crime. The fact is hospitals charge the fuck out of everything they can. I've never seen people so rich as hospital administrators. They know they have everyone by the balls and don't care because the ones their billing are to sick to do anything about it.
People bitch about Martin Shkrelli but he's got nothing on the hospital ad
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Yep, criminal and insane but nothing I can do about it. My particular charges are pretty modest, maybe $1000 or so for a couple of hours of work. But that helicopter gets expensive, the nice cardiac team has six highly paid professionals tending to it in three shifts 24 x 7, not to mention the suite costs several million dollars itself. ICU beds typically run several thousand per day. There are drugs that are three figures per dose.
I'd be the first to complain about the costs. I'm the one who gets yel
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Just gotta love Slashdot's editing function.....
Just to expand - if you have insurance covered by your employer than if you exceed the policy limits, somebody has paid for re insurance so that will kick in.
Sometimes. Not every policy has a backup if you exceed the limit.
There is nothing more confusing and contradictory than American healthcare. Statistics is a walk in the park compared to understanding the morass we've gotten ourselves into.
And won't ever be able to get ourselves out of. But that is anot
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Glad I don't live in the US... (Score:1)
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.
Good luck to him (Score:1)
I wonder, though how likely it is that any regular person would be able to get anyone else to pay their bills.
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See my post above. Although most people cannot motivate ex-Grateful Dead artists it seems to be something of a cottage industry at various Elk Clubs, American Legion Posts and social institutions of similar persuasions.
And that's pretty sad.....