Let's Hear It for Begging!

libertarian, health care, charity, fail

There's no zealot like a new zealot, and renaissanceguy is indeed a zealot. A Libertarian zealot. Honestly, I'll take the freaks over at Rapture Ready over Libertarians. A belief that Jesus is going to descend from the sky on a white horse shortly after Kirk Cameron converts in a public restroom is way saner than the Libertarian answer to poverty and need, which can be summed up thusly:

Beg, beg and beg some more.
Beg until you can beg no more!

Recently a commenter named Personal Failure asked:

What happens when private help isn’t available or isn’t enough? What then? My husband has MS. He needs medication, tests, doctors and treatments, but he was rescissed by his insurance because he failed to disclose a blow to the head as a child. (Does not cause MS.) He can get his MS meds free from the company, but those meds are known to cause liver damage, and he can’t get liver function tests for free, so he can’t take the meds. So there he is on the couch, too dizzy to walk the dog, let along work. Libertarianism works great- until you can’t work.

I have thought long and hard about an answer. Here is part of the answer below. More is coming, but I try to keep each post around 500 words.

I do not want to minimalize the situation that you find yourself in. It stinks, plain and simple. My heart goes out to you and your husband. I hope that he has the remitting kind of MS and that he enters remission soon. I would first like to ask a series of questions and then conclude with a comment about your last sentence.

Note 1: MS comes in 6 varieties, the most common being Relapsing/Remitting. R/R however, does not mean that you go from symptoms to total lack of symptoms. The disease may go into an inactive state, but the damage from the active state may very well remain. The dizzy? It's not going away. That's permanent now.

Have you sought a legal remedy against the insurance company? It sounds like they have violated their contract. Libertarians are against anyone’s doing that.

ZOMQF! That's hi-fuckin-larious. People are recissed every day in this country, and people die because of it. Recission is immoral and unethical, but it's not illegal.

Have you asked your friends and family for help? Perhaps each of your close friends and family members would be willing to pay for one liver test per year.

Basic social understanding fail. On two levels, actually. (1) I'm poor. Generally, if you're poor, all your friends are poor. I have no idea where rich people hang out, but it's not where I do. (2) If you want to find out exactly how many friends you have, get sick and stay sick. You probably have 1 or 2 friends. Oh, and begging? As if MS weren't bad enough, now we've got to beg?

Have you asked a church or other religious body for help? In my hometown there is a network of churches known as the Community Ministries that provides all sorts of resources to people in need. Maybe there is something like it where you live.

I'm an atheist, but even so, my local churches are totally overwhelmed with the need for food and shelter. There is no church medical charity in my area. For those counting, this is beg #2.

Have you held fundraisers or, better yet, asked a close friend or family member to hold fundraisers on your husband’s behalf? That is often done for people with chronic illnesses.
Is your husband a member of a support group? Perhaps they know of a foundation or private charity that could help him out.

And beg #3. Oooh, I have an idea. Let's take my desperately ill husband and parade him around for strangers to point at and feel sorry for. Not that every gas station in town isn't already filled with little donation jars for this person's house fire or that person's leukemia.

Has your husband thought about ways that he might still be able to make money from home, perhaps part-time? If that is not possible, please forgive my even asking the question. Last year I was struck with a debilitating condition that I thought would make it impossible for me to work anymore at my job. I told my wife that I might have to stay home from school and try to write a book or offer private music lessons or private tutoring to struggling students. Fortunately, my condition is under control–at least at the moment.

Oh, you know just how I feel. You almost had to maybe have a conversation about working from home. Hey, asshat, you never even tried to work from home, so you have no idea if that's possible or not, and, Teh Hubby did work from home. Before he got too sick to work.

In the meantime, I have no problem with you and your husband availing yourself of any government programs for which you qualify. You helped pay for them, after all. Although I would like to see most public welfare programs reduced or abolished, you might as well benefit from the ones that are operating now.

Oh, it's so nice of you to let us try to get disability/medicaid in another 3 months. You know, before you try to get rid of it. That's so sweet.

It is not fair to discuss whether or not Libertarianism would work in light of or current situation. The United States of America is not currently operating under anything like a Libertarian-type government. I believe that both you and your husband would be better able to withstand the current crisis if Libertarian principles were enacted.

Orly? You haven't given me one example of a Libertarian principle that would help in this situation, probably because their aren't any, you whingey spleenweasel.