Ron Paul’s Former Campaign Manager Died of Pneumonia, Penniless and Uninsured

This has to be one of the worse articles ever written. To mock a persons death especially someone that was extremely loyal and to use that against him? This article is beyond idiocy.

 

What people don't realize is until we allow emergency rooms to deny service, we have socialized medicine. The hospital spreads the cost for treating people who can't pay to the ones that can.

We will not be able to fix the medical issues until we tackle the real problem which is costs. How do we reduce costs? By producing more supply, increasing efficiency, and eliminating wastes.

We need to produce more doctors and nurses, eliminate and reduce tedious tasks such administration, and reduce profit margins.

 

Huh?

 

Are you advocating denying emergency medical services?

Since we don't usually deny emergency services, socialized medicine? No.
As an aside it is common to stabilize the patient at a for profit ER where they are afraid of a lawsuit and then one way or another dump them over to the public hospital.


"Reducing profit margins"? Yes.
More doctros and nurses and reduce admin costs. Yes.

Hopefully you will follow the logic of your statements and join the fight for single payer national health care.

 

not that it matters that much, but are "next of kins" legally required to pay medical bills on behalf of someone's estate? Seems weird? The bill should have been handed to his estate, and once it ran out of liquidity, the hospital should be SOL, no?

 

Complications from pneumonia?

Isn't that what AIDS patients always die from?

 

Yeah, I think you're right.

On the main topic, the only justification for this is down right selfishness. I can't believe so many people are just ready to let their fellow countrymen die, just because they don't have insurance.

 

I can't believe the libertarians who always advocate private charity as the answer to all social problems could not raise enough to help a prominent member.

Another example of libertarian theory crashing up against human behavior even among the insiders.

Rember poor old Ayn Rand going to government health care-- Medicare-- to take care of her health problems.

 

What a mooch this guy was. Stealing $400,000 in services he wasn't gonna pay for. The hospital should at least be allowed to take his body for research or sell off his remaining useful organs in partial satisfaction of the $400,000 debt.

 

Considering the fact that the guy died from pneumonia, his harvestable organs probably wouldn't bring in much cash. The hospital executives could only sell his kidneys at the low end of the market value, which means that they'd be on the poor-person market for kidneys, and poor people sometimes don't pay for their cut-rate kidneys. I'd say the risk is more than it's worth and Kent Snyder's family is culpable not only for the $400,000 medical bill, but also for the expense of disposing of organs that would only collect a meager profit in the poor-person range of prices.

 

that actually makes sense in the context of a piece i read where it said he could not get insurance due to a "preexisting condition".

 

Seems like a dishonest article.

 

It is... his mother is not ultimately liable for the medical bills, it would come out of his estate, and in this case, where the estate is not able to cover the bills, it would ultimately be written off.

There is nothing in the article that states the former campaign manager was upset with Paul or his position, yet it is insinuated.

Don't have to resort to half truth's to go after Paul and his ilk...

 

A lot of people officially die from pneumonia. They get sick by some other means, become weak, catch pneumonia, are unable to fight it and die because of the pneumonia rather than whatever it was that made them sick in the first place. It's the 6th leading cause of death in the US.

So yeah, people with AIDS probably die from pneumonia fairly often because their immune systems are weak but other things can make the immune system weak too.

 

So, it's a good thing that a hospital had to provide $400,000 in services without compensation?

 

If the estate did not pay, then the hospital would raise prices on the insured patients to cover the cost of medical care for him.

It would cause an increase in medical insurance. In the end, it's still a wealth transfer from paying patients to the non-paying patients. I thought they were against wealth transfer. It's still a wealth transfer by a different name.

 

So now bad debt is wealth transfer? I mean it really is: you charge customers extra, and the worse their credit is the more you charge them, to pay for the services given to people who don't pay. But, just about every business on the planet has bad debt. It is one of those unavoidable realities of doing business. It just seems overwrought to call it wealth transfer.

In any case, I totally agree with the sentiment that drove this article. It sucks that a young man was a deadly pre-existing condition can't get medical coverage and mandated nationalized healthcare would solve this problem. I think we should have it. It's just dumb to manufacture some kind of gotcha article about Ron Paul by hiding and distorting facts.

 

No, not at all... I do not agree with Mr. Paul on 75% of his views, if not more. If it were up to Mr. Paul we would not have roads and would be speaking Chinese.

My point is that the article is not entirely honest... attack Ron Paul and his beliefs, no need to attempt and twist.