9News, a local North Carolina news site has posted an unusual story of James Verone, who robbed an RBC bank on Thursday of last week. He had no gun but handed the teller a note that said, “This is a bank robbery, please only give me one dollar.”
Then he said, I’ll be sitting here on the chair waiting for the police. So, why did he do everything he could to get arrested? He says he did it for medical reasons. Verone has a growth on his chest, two ruptured discs and a problem with his left foot. At 59 years old, no job and a depleted bank account, he thought jail was the best place he could go for medical care and a roof over his head. Verone is hoping for a three-year sentence.
As his fellow American, I have to say, our national health care is in a very sad state.
Watch a video interview with Verone here:
Smart guy!
This man is a hero.Now there’s two options: Give Healthcare to everyone, as it should be.OR, you let the outrage pour over by letting this man take the loophole, and expose that fact that our criminals (and I don’t mean this guy) get free healthcare, but WE don’t.
First let me state that I am not from the US.
I do not agree with you: would you give up your freedom for health care? I don’t think so.
Prisoners get free health care since they had their freedom taken away, which includes the freedom and the ability to take care of ones healthcare.
Manipulating the system? 3 years for that !
Did he think he had a better chance to get health care buy robbing a Canadian Bank?RBC = Royal Bank of Canada.
I like how it’s a Canadian bank.
@Bill Wasson I was thinking that myself…
Ovidiu: That’s the point. The state of U.S. healthcare has become so noxious that, for a man as sick as this, jail is his only hope of receiving medical care. He’ll take being treated in prison over rotting away as a free man.
@jt706 Thanks, I got that but what I didn’t get was the other persons outrage – about convicts getting free health care – or maybe I misunderstood him too :-)
@Ovidiu Pacuraru Ah, I see. The outrage he speaks of is not that convicts get health care, but that law-abiding citizens don’t.
Trading liberty for health. I wonder how many decisions like this people have to make? Maybe instead of that old saying that people go to jail for “3 square meals a day.” should be changed. “Healthcare and 3 squares a day.”
Or, you know, he could work hard, get a job, and rebuild his life.
@Christopher Bob Prunotto Or, you know, he could work hard, get a job, and rebuild his life.
RBC Bank is headquartered in Raleigh, NC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Bank_of_Canada#RBC_Bank_.28USA.29
@Logan Wheatcraft @Christopher Bob Prunotto work hard and rebuild your life. Easy to say when you have a college degree and health insurance and no ruptured discs aren’t 59 and have no growth on your foot. A major problem is we as people and especially America n’s eat like crap, treat our bodies like crap and eachother like crap. Obviously if he felt he needed to do that he had a reason and I’m Sue he’s already tried working. Pretty sure prison wasn’t his first option.
Im not from the US either but your logic proves. When a government introduces universal healthcare they effectually make prisoners out of their people. Even if its just because of the extra tax they have to take from them to pay for it.
Where in this article did it say that he didn’t have a college degree, and where in my comment did I say that I do have a college degree? You know what happens when you assume…
In reality, I do have a college degree, but neither of my parents do, and worked hard all their lives to provide a good home to me. Just because you don’t have a college degree doesn’t mean that you can’t pull yourself up by your bootstraps and provide a better life for yourself.
@Logan Wheatcraft To clarify: As @Teresa Johnson said, I don”t think it”s anyones first option to say “let’s go to prison” before we say “let’s get a job.”
MY personal outrage comes from the fact that my family has been slammed with debt by hospitals for conditions arising from a drunk driver that will afflict my father and younger brother for the rest of their lives. Debt that my mother will likely be paying until the day she dies. Debt that I am very likely to finish paying, one way or another. “Universal” healthcare isn’t about going to the doctor for free when you have a cold. It’s about the people like my father, and my younger brother, who can’t make it on their own without help from the system.
Me? I’m 20 years old, living on my own, in an apartment in downtown Chicago. I work hard, and have nobody but myself to thank for it. I have my own health insurance, payed out of pocket. On a financial level, free healthcare does nothing for me – it comes from my paycheck EITHER way.
It is on the PERSONAL level that it completely offends me that a man can go into prison and take free healthcare, while people who have done NOTHING wrong suffer day in and day out, accruing only debt to the health care industry. An industry which, as we all know, is a fucking SCAM.
And I’m not angry at this man. I think he is absolutely ballsy and absolutely BRILLIANT for showing just how wrong things are. If you disagree witth my views, or even if you don’t believe me, I truly don’t care. I have my opinions, take it or leave it.
Unless of course someone chooses the “voluntary opt out” that comes with universal health care. Oh, whoops, I guess that makes you wrong then.
It always surprises me that many Americans (not people like you, of course, CBM) always create an uproar over attempts to make health care an accessible human right, as it should be — particularly in developed nations who have all the resources and no reason not to do this.
In Australia this sort of thing doesn’t happen because we’ve been looking out for each other’s health for decades, and nothing bad has come of it. Our economy certainly hasn’t collapsed as many anti-healthcare campaigners in the US predict — quite the opposite! I guess a government that invests in the health of its citizens reaps the benefits of productivity.
It’s always saddening to hear cases where people have chosen to suffer at home and subsequently died because they knew they couldn’t afford an emergency room visit, and I just can’t comprehend how people can develop such callousness for the wellbeing of fellow humans behind the shield of political leanings. And that the lack of accessible, affordable healthcare would drive a man to do something like this is just as saddening.
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Probably you could give me some work…..
@Logan Wheatcraft
Probably you could give him some work….
bet he didnt know theres a 3 year wait for an appointment…
jesus,what’s wrong with this man …
a college degree – especially if gotten in USA – means zero/nothing… please cut out that crap… i worked as a garbage collector in Spokane – no college degree was needed!
@Gustavo Bonato Abrão
The real problem here is people too unfit or unhealthy to work, who can’t support themselves – whose responsibility? Traditionally, it is/was their family or village who took care of them. Some states in the world, like the UK, have national health care, but to get that one needs to be a citizen. Some doctors and hospitals may offer their services without putting money/payment first… but in USA i guess not too much of that… and the problem of freeloaders choking up hospitals and doctors’ clinics etc. The BIG PICTURE is that “modern society” and their “state institions” have broken down…. they are/were false constructs, anyway…. but many came to depend on them… now their families, communities have broken down too… no way back… nowhere to turn… “institution” (healthcare) to “institution” (prison) is a circular option around a BIG VOID!… the VOID? = the state = false idolatry. The truth is that life is NOT a commodity to be ruled, taxed and traded by the state. Each individual is responsible for their own life… if we are sick, suffering, it is for us as individuals to experience and learn from such lessons… if we are healthy, whole, it is for us to help those we meet in need… this works better in practice at personal, village, community levels… NOT state, national levels where people are anonymous ciphers at the feet of false idols. This is what the story depicts. This is what people like james Verone, if he really exists, represent.
You must be living under a rock, right? Do you not see all the empty homes and people living on the streets and in shelters? There ARE no jobs out there! And if there are jobs, it’s going to the twenty somethings, not the fifty somethings! @Logan Wheatcraft
sassy said
You must be living under a rock, right? Do you not see all the empty homes and people living on the streets and in shelters? There ARE no jobs out there! And if there are jobs, it’s going to the twenty somethings, not the fifty somethings! @Logan Wheatcraft
From your comments (which are most welcome) you seem to assume idolatrous set-ups (“private companies” or the “state”?) are responsible for providing “jobs”, and that they’d rather choose younger people. Which region of USA are you describing? I’ve not been in those decadent states for over a decade! Most of the last 5 years i’ve been in India, SE Asia,… Seems to me idolatrous rocks have buried the “American Dream” with you and many others under a burden of materialistic ignorance. Why not start a project to employ people (enslave them, that is) building pyramids…. the same as on the rear of your $ bills?
…those whom i hear screaming for “jobs” seem like slaves whose shackles removed from their bodies are placed around their heads/minds. “Empty houses” are a metaphor for their empty lives… the American materialistic dream popped like a bubble to leave NOTHING! There’s more wisdom under the dust of Delhi than under the hats of “American” brain-washed dreamers…
@Teresa Johnson I dropped out of high school never went to college but somehow I worked hard enough to be pulling a very decent salary for myself. Bless yes I am but not just by sitting around waiting for the world to give me something. I went out and worked hard for what I have. Yes, I maybe in my mid-twenties but my grandpa is 80 years old and works his butt off too. There is no excuse for people not to work hard for what they have. Healthcare is not a right, its something earned. And yes for three years I didn’t have health insurance, did I get sick yup but at the same time – I self medicated and took care of my own problems. There are county hospitals and clinics where you can get treatment. Its appalling to think that Americans feel entitled for services they don’t pay or work hard for. Just my two cents.
@Joel Falconer Great statement: “I guess a government that invests in the health of its citizens reaps the benefits of productivity.” You would imagine that this sentiment would be quite obvious! It’s too bad that greed hasn’t gotten in its way for so many years.
@Joel Falconer oh oops, i sound like a socialist.
Hear, hear. To @Logan Wheatcraft : I’m 26. A couple of years ago, I herniated two discs. Luckily, I had health insurance. I also had a well-paying job. I still had trouble paying the medical bills. Imagine if I couldn’t get hired anywhere? I wouldn’t be able to afford health insurance. And I definitely wouldn’t be able to afford the MRI or Xrays that confirmed the disc hernation.
Then I moved to a state where health insurance is mandatory, and therefore, less expensive. Thank god for that. Without it, I couldn’t afford the many medical visits it’s taking to get my back healed.
Now, imagine I’d ruptured those discs instead of hernating them. Ruptured discs don’t just magically get better on their own, and let me tell you, even herniated discs caused too much pain for me to move, and kept me perpetually in tears. Ruptured dicss? I can’t even imagine that kind of pain, day in and day out. Imagine I was twice my current age, only a few years from retirement age. Even in places where there are laws against hiring discrimination because of age or disability, it’s hard to get a job if you’re nearing retirement age and you have health problems. There’s a good chance that someone younger and fitter is going to get that job.
So, there are more unemployed people than there are jobs, and your competition is going to be automatically favored because they’ll cost the company less, and you’re in massive amounts of pain all the time. How, praytell, should this man have “gotten a job and rebuilt his life?”
Really? I mean, really?
Your government spends *billions* of dollars every year dropping or otherwise expending munitions in foreign countries. (lets not even get into the question of why here…) Or how about the billions of dollars of bailouts to banks and investment firms?
But the idea of universal (not “free”, but “universal”) health care is offensive.
This is why most of the world just doesn’t get Americans. You’re willing to spend more money on blowing up shacks out in the desert than on children’s health.
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