Illumninatus! Author Needs Our Help 553
Criceratops writes, "Almost every fringe-geek worth their salt has read 'The Illuminatus! Trilogy,' or at least the 'Principia Discordia,' and much of the enlightenment therein came from Robert Anton Wilson. On the eve of 'Xena' being officially named Eris, Douglas Rushkoff's blog reveals that the extremely ill Mr. Wilson can't make his rent. Another testimony to how our society refuses to reward those who enrich it... but not if we can help it!"
Update to this story - Money raised (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I Don't Know, Man (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps you missed the part where he is 74 years old and extremely ill?
I also would like to know more about the why and how he got into his situation, but your comment really seems to be far over the top. Not everybody who is poor is "refusing to do actual work".
Re:I Don't Know, Man (Score:4, Informative)
The general deal is that he's suffering from the more morbid symptoms of post-polio syndrome, can't really walk, has trouble swallowing, and is extremely frail. He has friends serving as fulltime nurses and aids, but doesn't have family capable of providing support. The IRS and medical bills have also worked against his solvency.
Try getting a job with those symptons
Re:I Don't Know, Man (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I Don't Know, Man (Score:1, Informative)
The best part is when someone has a chronic illness from birth, such as hemophilia. When they're young they're covered by their parents insurance, but eventually they'll go out on their own and have to get their own. No insurance company will sell them a policy because the company can be almost certain the kid'll cost them more than the kid'll ever pay. The kid's just fucked unless they can score insurance from a spouse.
Re:If you're going to donate money... (Score:2, Informative)
According to Bob's own website the account is his personal PayPal account.
KFG
Re:I Don't Know, Man (Score:4, Informative)
Basically, medical insurance in theory is supposed to help protect you in the case that you have a bunch of medical bills. In practice what actually happens is that insurance companies either require deductables on the order of thousands of dollars per procedure (where every tiny thing is it's own procedure) or they simply don't cover very much.
Furthermore, unless you're extraordinarily healthy, once you get past a certain age it can be very difficult to get health insurance at all, because insurance companies are afraid you might actually use their services.
Finally on that note, even crappy insurance is extremely expensive- and unless you work for a company who helps pay for it, or are rich, you can't afford health care.
Now, for people who don't have health care, there is Medicaid and Medicare. These are basically government insurance. The problem is that over the last several years they have been gutted to the point where they are even more impotent than they used to be.
Whether you have Medicare or Medicaid or some insurance plan, the bills quickly add up and people are usually left in a situation where they can't afford any more medical treatment. From there the options depend basically on what exactly the person is dying of.
If you get shot/stabbed/dismemebered/etc. Then basically you can walk into any hospital in the US and they are required to give you "stabalizing treatment" - which basically amounts to stopping you from bleeding to death before they take your billing information. For people dying of long term terminal diseases (e.g. cancer, organ failure, etc.) then there are free hospitals. The idea is that when you go to one of these hospitals they take as much as they can get from you, and leave it at that. Of course these hospitals also generally have abysmal quality, so nobody who can afford to pay any medical bills goes to them, so they never get new equipment/have the budget to hire good doctors/etc. This makes a viscous sort of cycle. These also tend to be in rather bad areas in the bigger cities- they mainly serve to tread drug overdoses and gunshot wounds. If you live in a small town and need to get to a hosptial like this- too bad.
Your other choice aside from the free hospital is to go to a hospital that is equipped to give you some of the best medical care in the world, but it basically involves liquidating all of your assets and turning them over to the hospital, then getting as much on credit as you can, then when you have no more to give they cut you off of treatment and transfer you to the free hospital. These hospitals generally aren't equipped to keep up the level of treatment you've been getting, so at this point generally they dope you up on pain killers and let you die.
Re:In other news ... (Score:5, Informative)
$23, darling, $23.
Save 2 dollars, and please him even more by showing that you remembered the number.
Re:If you send him $5, the fnords won't get you. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I Don't Know, Man (Score:3, Informative)