Health Care Status Quo: Get Sick? You're Advised To Get Divorced...

[BlooInBloo]

Presumably the "defense of marriage people" then would be four-square behind a public option, RIGHT?

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/09/medical-divorce.php

"If you haven’t yet, please read Nick Kristoff’s column on his friend M’s divorce. To make a long story short, her husband was diagnosed with early-onset dementia which made it predictable that over the course of the years he was going to need a great deal of long-term medical care. In the American health system, a family with those kinds of health care needs can get the government to pick up the tab via Medicaid, but only if it burns through all of its assets first. So M was advised by social workers, medical professionals, and attorneys alike to divorce her husband, thus being able to shelter assets earmarked for her kids’ future from the coming medical maw."

Full NYT column:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/opinion/30kristof.html?em

[ljm2002]

1. On the contrary, the "defense of marriage people"...

...will react to this article with horror, horror! that anyone would be so crass as to divorce their ailing spouse for financial reasons. Whatever happened to morals and personal responsibility! How dare they shield whatever assets they have left -- why they OWE that money to the medical industry!

That's how I think they would respond, anyway.

[dflprincess]

4. Their response will depend on how many assets the couple is trying to protect

It's a 3 bedroom rambler in the 'burbs and a 401K account, then divorce would be wrong.

If your money is tied up in "the market" or a lot of real estate and you might have to liquidate something some of it to cover medical bills, then divorce is okay.

[Tansy_Gold]

2. I suppose divorce is better than murder

http://www.orangecountyda.com/home/index.asp?page=8&recordid=1358&returnurl=index.asp%3Fpage%3D8%26pagenumber%3D1%26pagesize%3D300%26deptid%3D%26archive%3D0%26sl_month%3D12


Hune 22, 2009

SANTA ANA – A mother and her son face trial today for conspiring to have her third husband murdered to save money by not paying for his cancer treatments and to financially profit from his insurance and 401k death benefits. Sandra Jessee, 58, formerly of Placentia, and her son Thomas Dayton Aehlert, 39, Gold Canyon, AZ, are charged with one felony count of special circumstances murder for financial gain and one felony count of conspiracy. If convicted, both defendants face a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Opening statements are expected to begin this afternoon, Monday, June 22, 2009, at 1:30 p.m. in Department C-34, Central Justice Center, Santa Ana.

In the spring of 1998, Sandra Jessee’s third husband of 15 years, 56-year-old Jack Jessee, was diagnosed with cancer. Sandra Jessee wanted to move to Arizona, where her co-defendant adult son from a previous marriage, Aehlert, had recently moved. The victim did not want to leave California, where his adult children all lived.

Between June 1, 1998, and July 1, 1999, Sandra Jessee and Aehlert are accused of conspiring to hire a hit man to murder Jack Jessee for financial gain. Sandra Jessee is accused of wanting to have the victim murdered because she didn’t think that all of his cancer treatments would be covered by insurance and she did not want to deplete their retirement savings.

**************

The woman arrested was a neighbor of a friend of mine.

[BlooInBloo]

3. Lives ruined all over the place. Sigh.

[Tansy_Gold]

6. It is believed that the co-defendant's wife was/is a teacher

in the local elementary school. Talk about lives ruined all the way around, yeah, no shit.

And it's not to say that universal health care would've stopped this woman and her son from arranging the murder of her husband/his step-father. But for all those rightwing assholes who carry on and on and on and on about the rights of the wealthy to be able to pass along their obscene estates to their heirs without having to pay taxes, where's the right of a middleclass person to do the same without having to go bankrupt to pay medical bills?

Oh, I forgot. "It's just different."

Not, it's not.



Tansy Gold (editing for typos made in the heat of lefteous outrage)

[redqueen]

5. One would hope...

but it seems most people in this country put profit before everything else... so I wouldn't be surprised at all to find they remained in favor of for-profit healthcare as our only choice.