Woman Having Asthma Attack Denied Meds Over $1 (and Change)

A woman was having an asthma attack when she entered a CVS pharmacy to purchase an inhaler. She had only $20, but the co-pay was $21 and change. She was, according to her boyfriend, on the floor wheezing yet the pharmacist refered to give her the medication until she came up with the extra dollar.

http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/loc...dnt-buy-inhaler-during-asthma-attack-20101014​

A dollar and change and he wouldn't give her the emergency medication she needed? I'm as capitalist as they come, but come on. I'd have paid the dollar out of my own pocket in that situation. What do you think?

 

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Fucking Christ. A person's life is now worth $1?

I'd have paid for it too, and I earn jack shit.

What next? Maybe they'll deny a diabetic some insulin if they're missing some change?

Civilization is a fucking joke.

 

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agreed.

it's hard for me to believe that some people don't think a correction is immanent.

 

And a lawsuit..

 

If I was totally heartless as that retard I would have at least give a couple of puffs from the inhalor and ask the boyfriend to go get some more cash. Now waht was that about Democrats and Health care insuarence? Doesn't that cover this? I hope we'll not be seeing more of this weird treatment of a fellow human.

 

What logic appeals?

Actually, you're not as capitalist as they come, as evidenced by the line you draw.

But that's sort of beside the point.

Many times when people argue over issues, they work from the extreme example of what can go wrong and try to push their way back to the middle. The right wing tells us the liberals would run their lives like some Communist dystopia; the left wing screams at every hint of fascism and tyranny it thinks it smells.

Functionally, the problem with such arguments is that they presume a certain degree of stupidity. And the line you draw rebukes that presumption. A dollar and change is worth more than a human life? It hasn't been so long since such a consideration was viewed as rhetorical hyperbole. A fire department letting a house burn to the ground because a tax or fee wasn't paid? It seemed an unthinkable proposition straight out of some anti-capitalists joke book. (By the way, does that apply both ways—e.g., if you don't pay for the police, they can't arrest you? Never mind, digression.)

Today, MSNBC visited the issue of the "crash tax", or a fee charged motorists in some municipalities for public response to car wrecks. Like a guy in Chicago Heights, sitting on his scooter at a red light when he was tail-ended by another vehicle. Nobody was hurt, and the other driver was at fault, but the man received a bill for two hundred dollars.

No need for an ambulance, no need for police, not your fault, but you still owe the municipal government two hundred dollars? I'm sorry, but before these issues arose, they seemed—at least to me—unthinkable hyperbole. Such outcomes seemed to be the mystical examples drawn from those reaching first to extremism in order to argue the central themes of an issue.

What I find striking is that these rhetorical propositions are coming true. The Boston Globe just ran an article on "The Empathy Deficit", and my first reaction was cautious. Yet I find myself wondering how we've ended up with such mechanical calculations. One town in Pennsylvania, apparently, went so far as to suggest that people don't have the right to leave their cars unlocked; the police were supposed to lock doors they saw unlocked, and then bill the vehicle owner for the service.

As a purely monetary consideration, anything can be a marketplace. But come on, really? Since human value is largely intangible, does it not appear in the calculation anywhere? Does functional sensibility have no purpose?

And in this particular case, the answer is apparently "no". When it comes to health care, maybe we should take a note from the mafia: Dead men don't pay. If for no other reason than making a buck, keep your patients and clients alive.

To the other, what does it suggest about our society if this is a valid logical appeal?
____________________

Notes:

O'Brien, Keith. "The empathy deficit". The Boston Globe. October 17, 2010. BostonGlobe.com. October 19, 2010. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/10/17/the_empathy_deficit/

 

"It has been happening every day for the past four or five days," she said.

Yet on this trip to Micky D's she just didn't think to take her inhaler.

Almost Darwin Award material.

 

None of this would've happened if Micky D's had inhalers on their "value menu". So I blame them.:bugeye:

 

I find the story hilarious, SNL couldn't do better!

 

Freakonomics suggests the problem is TV and the fact that people have been using it as a cheap babysitter so much so that children don't learn social contracts appropriately. I know a LOT of parents who park their kids in front of the TV to "have some time off".

 

I would have ponied up the extra dollar, but I understand where the store is coming from. It's a business, not a charity.

 

He said he lived right around the corner, he could have, instead of arguing in the store, went around the corner (running around the corner from the McD's) to get the inhaler?

 

If your GF was laying on the floor wheezing, because she couldn't breathe, you would leave her there, and go home for the inhaler?...I couldn't do it.

 

A land of confusion

Perhaps in Australia. On this occasion, I have to agree with Fraggle Rocker in part; for me it's a matter of liability, not confidence swindles. It's a practical consideration in that sense more than it is an issue of principle. Americans face the possibility of being sued if they perform CPR and fail to save a person's life.

The question of principle, of course, arises when we stop to wonder how things got so far out of hand in the first place.

This is the world we live in,
And these are the hands we're given.
Use them and let's start trying
To make it a place worth living in.

(Genesis)​

 

If you had to choice between leaving her or having her die from an asthma attack, would you leave to get the inhaler?

 

An ambulance was called, and on the way... Now yeah, the BF said they live around the corner, but that doesn't mean he really does. There's a chance the ambulance would be there before he ever got back... So no, I doubt I would leave her.. If anything, I'd break the law and grab the inhaler if I had to. I'd rather go to jail for a short time, than let a loved one suffer on the floor. But, that's just me.

 

There's a show called Make it or Break it which recently had an episode with that exact scenario.

One of the main characters, an Olympic hopeful in women's gymnastics, goes to the pharmacy to get medicine her brother needs ASAP. There's some screw up with the insurance and, instead of the twenty dollar co-pay she usually pays, the pharmacists says it will cost like $150. The girl doesn't have the money and pleads her case with the pharmacist saying her brother may die without the medication. He steadfastly refuses to give it to her and she grabs the medicine, throws down the twenty, and runs out of the store.

She gets the meds to her brother in time but in the season finale the police show up at the Olympic trials and cuff her just after she's qualified for the US team.

I thought this whole scenario was completely absurd until I heard this story.