Ummm.... this would happen in Canada as well. Nursing home care is subsidized, but only after you have exhausted your own personal assets or income.
My grandfather went into a nursing home in Canada and the gov’t took 80% of his pension income and then subsidized the rest. That includes savings as well.
He was rejected from our universal healthcare system because of the astronomical costs of keeping a 96 year old man (with a life ending disease) alive.
Those costs exist under every system regardless of whether or not the customer sees those costs.
This is not a defense of our "private" healthcare system. This is a defense of our public healthcare system. They made the rational decision to focus their resources on younger people with better chances of recovery. Dr. Lederman made the rational choice to sell his Nobel prize to extend his life. At least that option was available to him! The same can't be said for people like Charlie Gard.
This is a good point - and something ignored by some advocates of universal healthcare (I'm partial to the idea of universal healthcare, but would like to see more honest debate of the issue).
Me too. I spend more time in hospitals than the average person my age due to a hereditary condition.
I try very hard to stay well and do precisely what I'm told by medical professionals.
Many people that I've met in the hospital do not. They're often older and should know better, but they'll hear "No foods or liquids", and sneak in beef jerky before surgery anyway.
That's just the tip of the iceberg.
Universal healthcare will need to cover all of these people who don't listen to medical advice, and will return because of it.
From a private insurance or single payer insurance perspective there may not be a difference between the two.
All I know is that I must have good medical insurance at all times, otherwise I will be screwed in so many ways.
If well known, well off, high profile people like Lederman get wiped out by ill health and no one cares just think how much worse it must be for the more average person. I really enjoyed his "God Particle" book. RIP.
He sold a lot of those books. What happened to the money? It's not like he didn't do well as a scientist and director of a major Department of Energy lab, and $1 million that comes with the Nobel.
This is one of the things that convinced me as a teenager that our entire healthcare system is fucked. My mom died of an aggressive form of cancer after ONLY 15 months of treatment.
My dad, making an upper middle class wage in a low cost of living area with good insurance, was almost bankrupt by the end of it. He had to borrow money from his siblings to bury my mother. On top of that, he is the kind of guy that makes /r/personalfinance proud. If someone like him that shuns most luxuries and makes a top 10% salary in the US can have his bank account decimated in under 2 years, I shudder to think about the 90% of people that make less than him and have less self-control.
As a society (US) we HAVE to solve this problem. Our healthcare system is a disaster from top to bottom.
absolutely crazy what we have become here. and i thought this stuff was only happening in 3rd world countries (like russia) where world known scientist live in poverty conditions.
But then how would we know the value of a Nobel prize? I'm sure the University of Chicago economists would tell us that you can't have an efficient market for Nobel medals without such transactions.
My thoughts exactly. Or at the very least, help fundraising with current and former university students. I am sure a lot of them would have had contributed.
Lederman began suffering memory loss in 2011, as the article mentions. Four years later, it is unlikely that he had the energy and capability to launch a crowd-sourced fundraising campaign.
Professors aren't really known for their lack of hubris, either... begging students/faculty for money might have seemed to him an activity that would rob him of whatever dignity he had left. In other words, I am not shocked a renowned Nobel Prize-winning physicist refused to ask for help.
To face a horrible illness and have that be compounded by having to give up a symbol of your life's biggest achievement must have been awful. The UK isn't perfect, but I'm very glad to live in a country where this sort of thing doesn't happen.
How do you come to that conclusion? The UK government won't fund a nursing home unless you have exhausted most of your assets. See, for instance, https://www.carehome.co.uk/fees/feesadvice.cfm. I dare say it might still be better than the US but I don't know for certain.
A Russian billionaire paid USD$4.1 million for James Watson's Nobel Prize. In an act of stunning decency he apparently returned the medal to James Watson.
Yes, you need to shop for medical care, the costs can be drastically different from one hospital to the next... I think there's a website designed to help you do that but I can't find it right now.
Very sad news. Dr. Lederman was an excellent teacher in addition to being a researcher. He encouraged lecture participation and making educated guesses (I had a freshman year class with him and I didn't even know he won a Nobel until the end of the semester).
Mostly no, they do not. PIs are typically paid little, given their worth on the market for their skills. Even though he was 'famous', he got his Nobel at ~70 years old, meaning that he spent most of his earning years 'unrecognized'. I know you can look up any University of California professor's earnings here: https://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/state-pay/art...
For instance Professor Vickram Chandra of UC Berkeley [0] made ~$91k in 2016 [1]. Other professors make more, like Professor Alexandrova of UCLA who make ~$146k in 2016 [2]. You can poke around the UCs and compare. Do remember that most PIs labor in grad school for ~7 years, earning barely anything.
I do not know of other databases for other universities that do this, but many US states have sunshine laws that make professor's salaries public information. I know that Colorado also mandates that all public employee's emails are public information too and I think other states do this as well, though I do not have a list of them.
Hundreds of years from now, when this time period is documented in history books, my great great grandchildren will look back on our greed-driven for-profit healthcare system as a shameful black mark in American history, just like we look back at the history of slavery today. They’ll ask “How could a democracy have allowed random, treatable health conditions to ruin people financially?” They’ll be horrified by how greedy and barbaric we are as a people, same as how we look back at the Civil War era society that promoted slavery.
No they won't, it'll be whitewashed in textbooks and only those who study history will know. There's already so many so-called black marks that are worse and already quietly overlooked.
It depends on what political system we have by then. If we do develop further and progress to a one whole planet mentality (no countries/borders etc) then we will know our history as it was.
If we continue on the current path then im afraid we'll still be divided with all the consequences (same old same old).
" No they won't, it'll be whitewashed in textbooks and only those who study history will know. There's already so many so-called black marks that are worse and already quietly overlooked.
"
Can you name a political system that didn't selectively rewrite or selectively teach history? I think of it as a spectrum, but very non-ideal whichever direction you look.
The US foreign policy for the Americas in the early 20th century is something that tends to be thoroughly ignored.
Treatment of indigenous peoples around the world is also another big blinders, although the US has done one of the better jobs of being forthright about poor treatment (compared to Canada, say).
The problem with that book is so much of its unverifiable and unsourced or a gross exaggeration of the actual facts. It is not an accurate representation of history, and seems to just try and shock the reader.
I don't know if that guy is a liberal or conservative, but he is a Stanford professor, and that seems like a pretty reputable source. At least more than Howard Zinn.
No I am not a conservative. I have read that book, and the first time I read it I liked it a lot. I thought it was the definitive book on US history. However, I have heard from many reputable sources about the problems that the book has, and Howard Zinn himself has an obvious agenda. Regardless of ideology, a book that paints itself as nonfiction history book should be objective and unbiased. The Peoples History of the United States is undeniably biased in my opinion, and for that reason I do not recommend it except for someone's own personal enjoyment.
Isn’t that sort of debate pretty common when it comes to history books? The entire point of the book was to write about history from the point of view of those who “lost.” Of course it’s biased in that respect, and it was on purpose.
Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen talks a lot about how whitewashed, and classist history text books are, and why that is the case.
A summary of the book is that history textbooks have a tendency to avoid showing anything negative done by great American historical figures because they are held up as heroes for people in imitate. There is a narrative of constant progress that is told in the textbooks that does not match with actual history. History textbooks avoid talking about class struggles altogether, because if they did they would be labeled as Marxist. There is a general avoidance of discussing immoral foreign policy. The book backs up these claims by citing many popular textbooks and how they cover, or don't cover, historical events.
(The following summary of the book is my own understanding of the book's opinions and not necessarily my own. I haven't studied history enough to hold my own opinion.)
Colonialism is one of them. History books in US and UK still teach that the colonizers saved the savages and brought them to the modern age. They continue to completely ignore that most colonies underwent centuries long recession as a result of the repression. Japan was never colonized and became quite advanced.
Which books? I've read through a fair number of history books published in the US, and they have tended to have a strong focus on the problems caused by colonization while criticizing the idea of 'saving' the locals.
I don't think that's true. I went to school in the UK in the 80's and my kids are going to school in the US now, and this is far from what I remember then and not what I see now. "Colonial guilt" is how I would sum it up. Not to say there's not a lot of whitewashing and selective reporting, far from it. But it's probably been 50 years since "teach that the colonizers saved the savages"..
You have a point about the economic impact of the colonialism, and the economic value that was extracted. At least in the case of the UK, that was made it a global power. That is usually not discussed much, because it's history, not economics...
The original premise was that black marks will be overlooked. I don’t know how to break it to you, but the ones you’ve listed are infamous and hardly overlooked.
Premise: No they won't, it'll be whitewashed in textbooks and only those who study history will know. There's already so many so-called black marks that are worse and already quietly overlooked.
And you just offered a ton of support for the competing hypothesis that our period of history will be infamous along with the ones you’ve listed.
> the ones you've listed are infamous and hardly overlooked
You think? Here's my experience (I went to school in Germany).
> Annihilation of local tribes by colonisers
Saw some TV documentaries on it. Not mentioned in history class.
> forced opium enslavement of China
Heard about it on a history podcast. Not mentioned in any sort of mainstream media or curriculums.
> dividing up China between France/Britain/Japan
Hearing about this for the first time now.
> pestilence from European cattle annihilating 2/3 of inland african people via starvation
Hearing about this for the first time now.
> the policy of the Holy Roman Emperor and The Pope to keep german states at war with italian states
This rings a bell, but only very distantly. So maybe I've heard about that somewhere, but no idea where.
> emperor Chin executing the whole village where any crime at all occurred
Who's emperor Chin?
> The Spanish Inquisition
Saw some TV documentaries on it. Not mentioned in history class.
> [the last three bulletpoints about communist dictatorships]
The gulags were mentioned in history class. Nothing about Mao or the Khmer Rouge. I saw some documentaries about Mao on TV, though.
In general, history education in school was infuriatingly superficial wrt the 20th century. The curriculum was basically chronological, starting with the antique Egyptian empire in 5th grade and ending with contemporary history in the 10th grade. (Then in 11th through 13th grade, the same structure, but condensed into three years.)
The obvious issue with this structure is that you always run out of time at the end of the curriculum, so you have to rush through the most recent parts of history, which IMO ought to be given the strongest emphasis of all periods.
No offense to this site, I like it a lot so far, but I wouldn’t favorably compare it in terms of non-technical knowledge to most of the educated population. You listed a ton of really infamous events, ones that are routinely covered in intro classes at all levels of schooling, and have entered even pop culture. If you think that most people are unaware of all, but a couple of them, you’re grossly underestimating people. I’d argue that the only two many people wouldn’t know are the actions of the pope one, and the Chin emperor. The rest are familiar to pretty much everyone who made it through high school.
I think comparing this to slavery, the Indian wars, Jim Crow, etc. more than a little hyperbolic.
There's a big difference between using violence to control other people, take their land or systemic disenfranchisement and the best healthcare being affordable to a big chunk of the population.
Things that are Really Bad(TM) involve people actively doing things that we consider highly immoral today. Healthcare is just a case of failing to find a workable solution. The situations are very different.
It's deeply immoral to use violence to control people. It's deeply immoral to hoard money and resources (to "be rich" in today's language) and ensure the system of resource hoarding continues over generations through lobbying and corruption. That's the extent of the comparison -- the magnitude of the immorality -- and I think it's fair?
To me, there's planning ahead, with a large emergency fund and survival supplies for one's family, and then there's hoarding money and resources.
"When you start talking about whether it is moral to be rich, you end up heading down some difficult logical paths. If I am obligated to use my wealth to help people, am I not obligated to keep doing so until I am myself a pauper? Surely this obligation attaches to anyone who consumes luxuries they do not need, or who has some savings that they are not spending on malaria treatment for children. But the central point I want to make here is that the moral duty becomes greater the more wealth you have. If you end up with a $50,000 a year or $100,000 a year salary, we can debate what amount you should spend on helping other people. But if you earn $250,000 or 1 million, it’s quite clear that the bulk of your income should be given away. You can live very comfortably on $100,000 or so and have luxury and indulgence, so anything beyond is almost indisputably indefensible." ~ Nathan Robinson, It's Basically Just Immoral To Be Rich
Or you can save all that money to work on your own projects like curing cancer. Eg, tens or hundreds of billions of dollars are being wasted every year on crappy (not even reproducible in principle) medical research:
How do you expect anyone to compete with the government and fund useful medical research if they aren't allowed to accumulate enough wealth to compete with the tidal wave of crap that governments are producing? You need to "hoard" at least a couple hundred million dollars to even hope to compete with that.
Maybe we can agree if people in positions like Larry Ellison's or Elon Musk's were hoarding money with the intention of funding medical research, setting up entities that make it difficult-to-impossible to blow it all on buying a Hawaiian island or lifting a car into space for entertainment, then we wouldn't be having this exchange.
If you look at the latest news stories about Memorial Sloan Kettering (ProPublica is a place to start) and conclude that the government should minimize involvement in medical research for the betterment humankind Because Competition... you will certainly find plenty of friends, I suppose
I'm not saying competition is good for medical research, but having done medical research I am well aware of the unbelievable rate at which crappy papers are being published. And then when you try to publish a paper you're expected to somehow address all these previous crappy papers... We simply need some alternative to the current system and they are all being drowned out because they simply cant compete funding-wise.
Lets say NIH is producing 99.99% crap (about 1 in 10k papers is useful) at ~$30 billion per year. Elon musk could set up MIH (Musk Institutes of Health) that is 100x more efficient (producing 1/100th the papers, but that are "only" 99% crap) for ~$300 million/year. After 73 years, about one human lifetime, the fund would be bankrupt. That's why I say you need to accumulate at least a couple hundred million dollars to hope to have an effect.
>I think comparing this to slavery, the Indian wars, Jim Crow, etc. more than a little hyperbolic.
>There's a big difference between [...] systemic disenfranchisement and [...] healthcare being affordable to a big chunk of the population.
I edited your post a bit. Frankly, I don't see the difference unless you don't classify healthcare as a right. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human rights would disagree with you, but that's okay.
If that doesn't float your boat, we can look at outcomes instead. In both cases, people are forced to live without dignity regardless of whether or not that end is achieved by systemic financial coercion, by strapping someone to a board and pouring water on their face, or by bludgeoning them.
All are inhumane.
Healthcare is not a 'we can't find a solution' problem. It is a 'a lot of people are making a lot of money off this combination of inelastic demand and opaque pricing for technical service' problem. Call a spade a spade.
> "I'm shocked it sold at all," Lederman's wife, Ellen, told The Associated Press on Friday. "We would let little kids play with it and have their picture taken."
> Auction manager Laura Yntema told NBC News that the winning bid was placed online — but she declined to provide further information about the buyer, citing the auction house's confidentiality rules.
So an anonymous person provided for Lederman’s retirement in exchange for “ownership” of a piece of metal, with little intrinsic value, no sentimental value, and that will forever be know as “Lederman’s Nobel medal” never as belonging to the buyer.
Just another way to look at how the “mechanics of society” worked in the case.
I had very similar figures (avg 18 months), although unofficial, from a person involved with nursing homes over here (western european well developed country with good medical system), although I obviously cannot cite.
So yes, please visit them as soon as you can after admission, don't put away...
Are nursing homes even prevalent in other countries? When I visited Thailand they were appalled at idea of putting elderly relatives in a random building and not with family, but I don't know if they are the exception or the US is
I'm not actually certain that the Civil War era is viewed universally as a barbaric time, or that slavery is universally viewed as a black mark in American History. There is still plenty of popular music and subcultures that look on those times positively, perhaps even fondly. In some sense the culture behind the civil war is still very strong in America, and whether or not it was bad is still heavily debated.
What? There's certainly debate around whether or not slavery was the cause of the Civil War, but slavery is absolutely universally viewed as a black mark in American history.
There's not really a debate about whether or not slavery was the cause of the civil war, at least not among historians. You can go a lot deeper on this if you want, but take for example one of the first sentences in the Mississippi Declaration of Secession: "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery"
I entirely agree with you, such statements can be found in every one of the secession declarations. Unfortunately, those documents don't make their way into discussions involving the history of slavery and the Civil War on the right.
I think when we use the word "debate" like this, we're doing a huge favor we don't owe to a group of people who are — in bad faith — not acknowledging a set of facts. Just because a group of people hold some belief doesn't make it valid. There's no "debate" over whether vaccines cause autism, there's no "debate" whether climate change is real or affected by humans, and there's no "debate" over whether slavery was a central issue in the Civil War.
These delusions that hateful ideas don't have any traction in America are exactly why Trumpism has been able to succeed. There are sizable groups of people in this country with terrifying beliefs. You've got to take off the blinders.
"The Times found that nearly 20% of Trump supporters did not approve of freeing the slaves, according to a January YouGov/Economist poll"
You mean just like we're still debating whether the Nazis were wrong and whether it was right to stop them? I bet you no Jewish people are debating that like no black people are debating whether slavery was wrong. How can you possibly make an argument that any type of slavery is not wrong? I'm very curious to hear this argument if you have one.
Yes, marginalized people will not be discussing whether their marginalization was a good things. However, there are neonazi or Nazi sympathetic subcultures, some of them fairly large. It would by incorrect to then state that it is universally agreed upon that nazis were evil and a black mark on history. Similarly, there is a significant movement in the United States that either waxes nostalgic about or outright prefers the pre-civil war era with its slavery.
I understand what you're saying, but I don't think such people's hateful opinions should be counted when speaking about such things. There are always going to be people who do not think murder, slavery, and torture are not wrong but right. They are a small minority and while it's important you make note that such scum and their opinions exist, it's also important to note that they do not represent a significant portion of people either in number or in strength of opinion. There will always be outliers but I'd say most people and all decent people agree that slavery and the nazis were both wrong.
Completely agree but don't think that changes the likelihood of future generations looking back shamefully. They'll look back just as we do and say "at least we don't do that anymore". They'll be hypocrites, but it doesn't mean they'll be wrong about us.
For one we are a Republic not a democracy. If we were a pure democracy its arguable whether we would be in better or worse shape. If we were a Republic as our constitution was drafted, prior to the supreme court gutting state and individual liberties with the commerce clause,etc. I think we would be in much better shape
What is the purpose of your first sentence? Colloquially we speak of democracy as being something with representation that is elected with a large majority of the adult population being eligible to vote. Surely you know this so I can't figure what the point of being so pedantic is. Your assertion in the last sentence certainly needs more evidence to support it. As it stands it's unlikely to sway anyone and quite frankly paints a picture of you being a fanatic. This is especially so since the Commerce Clause was the justification for the Civil Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act greatly increased individual liberties.
We evidently have many not-decent people who vote for like minded Congressional representatives. At least a majority otherwise this would have been fixed by now.
The fact that losing the birth-lottery and getting sick can make someone financially-poor through absolutely no fault of their own is astonishing.
That so many people I personally know in America are absolutely fine with this is something that blows my mind. I think it's insane, but I'm a "socialist" Canadian who shouldn't be pushing my crazy ideas on the southerners.
He actually WON the birth lottery, having died at age 96. The medal was probably a more practical asset to sell-off for the family than something like real-estate.
The cited rate for skilled nursing care in the article is not accurate. US 10K/month is about normal for a SHARED room for someone who is NOT in a memory unit. It only goes higher from there.
There's something to be said for keeling over from a sudden heart attack as a septuagenarian.
This story isn't really about "losing the birth lottery", so to speak. Its about someone not being able to afford nursing home care.
The fact is that the US spends much of its money on caring for the elderly already, and there is, as the article notes, medicaid for those who cant afford to pay for nursing home care. As a result, im a bit confused as to why he had to sell his medal.
It might be along the lines that you have to have a minimum of assets to and money to qualify for some of those things. You know to prevent middle class and wealthy people from abusing the system designed for people who can't afford care.
Having something that you could sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars therefore may be a disqualifer.
I'm currently living in Tanzania (I grew up in the US). My wife fell into a ditch and broke her tooth. The cost to get it fixed? 20,000TZS (~$10). The problem is with our third party payer system, not with the free market.
I couldn’t easily find average incomes, but Tanzania has a GDP/capita that is more than 60 times less than that of the US. So the $10 is the equivalent of it costing $600 There.
You’re likely seeing cheaper prices because of cheaper labor and doesn’t really tell us anything about the efficacies of a free market system or a third party payer system.
It is a hybrid system with individuals forced into highly-disadvantaged market transactions. It has the elements ofboth market and non-market systems which benefit monopolistic suppliers.
Lots of Americans agree with you. The problem is those that don't are:
1. Willing to gamble they'll never get sick
2. Don't want "their" tax dollars paying for other people's medical bills, other peoples anything for that matter. More aircraft carriers please!
3. Don't think there's a problem with the system because it hasn't destroyed them yet.
4. America is #1, best health care in the world, and any contrary information is ignored.
Unfortunately for a lot of people if a problem doesn't impact them directly, it's not a problem or doesn't really exist and anyone else can eff off. In a very real way it's not just anti-socialist, it's just anti-social.
I think it really does come down to a disconnect of ideals, how much to support others by giving up some of your own?
For instance, I truthfully told my boss I wouldn't mind my tax rate increasing if it meant everyone got medical coverage. He almost lost it, like he was ready to kill me, he was so angry. The fact that he would lose even more of his money, the rage, it was ferocious.
I really saw first hand the "I got mine, fuck y'all" mentality. I didn't think it was real until then. I always thought that was sound-bite fox news talking point and the argument was over how much one should sacrifice for others. I stand corrected.
It's very hard for people to envision what would happen, outside of "i'd have to pay more money". except... a lot of society would change overall:
* predatory lending would drop (people not having to go to payday lenders to get money for medicine, for example)
* fewer sick days from people (either for themselves or their kids)
* FAR FAR FAR more mobility in the labor force, as so many people feel locked in to their job because "insurance". Employer-provided insurance is one of the biggest things holding down our innovation and progress in society, IMO. I know dozens of talented people who are afraid to move jobs, move cities, or make any change at all because "current job = health insurance". They'll never be able to go work for newer small company X, because "insurance". Big companies may bitch about costs, but employer-provided insurance is a huge moat - financially and emotionally - that keeps the status quo humming to the detriment of many on the lower end.
Or maybe you don't get capitalism. It's not about selfishness or not wanting to lose money, it's about pushing others to work harder. Think of UBI as the other extreme, discouraging people to work for their own good when we'll have automation. Right now though, we need productivity, and we achieve that through capitalism.
Money is a zero sum game, otherwise we could just print as much as we could. We're only as rich as others around us work hard for us. Granted, we live in a crony capitalist society so it's not working that well. For example, healthcare in the US is notorious for failing to spend money wisely.
>The cost of receiving care in a nursing home can also present a significant burden. A private room in a nursing facility costs, on average, $7,698 per month. And Medicare, which covers the vast majority of Americans over 65, generally does not cover long-term nursing care.
>Many Americans do end up getting Medicaid to cover nursing home bills — but that often requires selling off significant assets and dwindling down savings in order to fall below the public program’s income requirements.
The costs are so high is because much of that money goes to subsidizing Medicare and Medicaid, hence the socialist aspect of having to downsize your assets to qualify.
May be. But that's not all and not even scratching the surface of real reasons for healthcare mess. Do you think Insurance Companies should be the middle men for EVERY process with healthcare including a simple visit to the doctor ? The answer to that question will also help understand the crazy costs of healthcare.
Why do we need Health "Insurance" to just go see a doctor ? Why not pay the doctor directly which cuts out middlemen (insurance and billing companies) for simple stuff and keep insurance for you know the reason Insurance should exist: catastrophies.
Hospital costs are high... because of medicaid? You sure you don't want to trot out the old chestnut that they are also high because we're subsidizing the rest of the world's low medical costs? Pull the other one.
Also the last sentence you wrote doesn't make sense. Please justify your use of "socialist aspect of downsizing assets to qualify".
I think he's trying to dog socialism by attaching it to the wealth requirements for qualifying for medicare/medicaid. IE you can't have hundreds of thousands of dollars in asestes and property and qualify. I don't perceive this as a problem with socialism, so much as preventing people that could pay for care trying to leech off government programs because they don't wanna and are butt hurt because poor people don't just die in a gutter.
What is happening in this scenario is a re-distribution of wealth. The costs of subsidizing Medicare and Medicaid, programs which would collapse without the subsidy of private insurance pricing, are financed by the rich- including this nobel winner who will redistribute his asset(s) to those in need (Medicaid beneficiaries). That is the 'socialist aspect'.
If you'd like to learn more about how hospitals that serve Medicare/Medicaid patients need additional taxpayer funding to remain financially solvent, you can look at the statistics around Disproportionate Share Hospitals (DSH).
The way Medicaid works is they'll pay for a nursing home once you run out of money. They also can claw back some related person gifts (or other transactions) that happened within the past few years.
If you have a lot of assets you want to pass to your heirs, but not enough assets you don't mind selling to pay for your end of life care, it's best to give to your heirs over the course of your life.
The downside is a substantial gift while the giver is alive has a paperwork burden, as well as a loss in the step-up in cost basis you get when giving after death. The upside is you get to see how your heirs use the gift and you can express your feelings directly, rather than through rolling in your grave.
People that do not benefit society at all, like celebrities that are known from that they are known, can buy a diamond ring for 1.5+ mil dollars. And the people awarded with highest, most prestigious award that human can receive for pushing humankind further and further can't afford to pay for medical bills. There is something really wrong with the world in which we live.
Perhaps I am missing something, but the Vox story says that he could afford to pay his medical bills. He sold some assets, and paid his bills. There are much better arguments for universal health care than someone with almost $800K in unneeded assets. Taxes should first subsidize health care for those who can't afford it on their own.
My grandfather went into a nursing home in Canada and the gov’t took 80% of his pension income and then subsidized the rest. That includes savings as well.