Your tax dollars is going to help this man

[richardhutnik]

rocketpig said:

thranx said:

rocketpig said:

HappySqurriel said:

rocketpig said:

ssj12 said:

its called being humane. since we have him detained the government has a right to treat him as a human while under its care. and they do have the same medicine as us. 

This. As a society, we have a responsibility to keep the man alive. He is detained and has no ability to attain health coverage through other means. An ugly necessity but one we have to uphold. It's part of the agreement we make as a society to not treat prisoners cruelly and to let the courts decide their fate instead of leaving everything to vigilante justice.

I suspect many people in this thread complaining about his medical costs haven't really thought this through entirely. What about a guy who was given ten years for robbery and needs a heart transplant nine years into his term? Should he die? What exceptions to we make to this rule and who decides how to enforce them?

I've never seen a government agency be given "exceptions" to rules where it has handled them properly. The only alternative is to give everyone care and just swallow that bitter pill.

The government has the responsibility to preserve the status-quo of inmate’s health; they should not be expected to go to extraordinary lengths to improve the health of someone who is in prison.

While I think it would be immoral and unjustifiable to allow a prisoner to die because he didn’t have access to readily available inexpensive medical care, it is entirely reasonable to say that medical procedures that will cost $800,000 are far above and beyond what is required of the state to provide inmates.

And who gets to make that call? Are you comfortable letting the government decide who lives and who dies?

I'm not.

And in this case, the "status quo" means this man dies. That's not a "status quo of health" AT ALL.

He had a choice to not harm and rape other people. Since he made the wrong choice he should not get above and beyond care that most other americans would not get paid by the taxpayers. He is free to pay his own surgury, I am not arguing he should barred from the procedure. Perhaps some of you would like to donate to his cause and help him get better. Maybe he has a savings he could use.

We, as a society, have removed his ability to pay for anything through incarceration. You're essentially killing the man.

And this care should be available to every American but that's steering this subject off-course. The "race to the bottom" argument posed by many in the healthcare debate is unsettling to say the least.

The entire accepting of the race to the bottom, and getting irate as others manage to fight back against it (like now only government workers have pensions, and everyone else is forced to fend for themselves and never see retirement ever), is a nasty trick happening.  Individuals want others to also go down the tubes with them.  We got rid of lifetime employment, and now employment is increasingly becoming temporary as people have to even have two or three jobs to barely make it.  And this gets increasingly accepted.  In America, look for rollbacks of even basic health coverage, as it becomes that even having health insurance will be a luxury.  Then, only government workers will have health insurance and there will be a movement to make sure even they don't get anything.  But hey, it is ok, we have emergency rooms.  But who says that emergency rooms won't get so taxed they won't also feel a need to turn people away and be allowed to?

But hey, this is all ok, if no one FORCED people into such situations.  If economic conditions brought about by free markets and mistakes and bad luck result in people in dire straights, it isn't anyone did it to themselves.  Make the consequences of actions such that people die, well it is the market that made it so, no one in particular.  Make the problems in society disassociated with everyone.  And shoot, if we drive dispair big enough, we can get people to want to off themselves.  Think of the opportunities to harvest organs and other elements of people who want to no longer live.  We could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue selling organs and body parts of individuals who can't take it any longer in life and just want to end it.  Nice and clean and no one's fault.  After all, why should anyone be another person's keeper?  Heck, we could make a reality TV series out of it for good ratings (the All-Suicide Channel suggested by George Carlin):

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xdblpu_the-all-suicide-tv-channel-and-pyra_fun

(Warning on the language used in that clip)