At around 10:30pm last night we noticed a couple of cop cars and and ambulance on our block. Didn’t seem like anything too serious, we could hear the cops talking to an agitated and possibly mentally ill man, the usual talking-him-down stuff. No lights or sirens or weapons or anything.
After a few minutes, they came from around a parked car and we saw that they had him on a stretcher, and for what seemed to be the first time he realized they were going to put him in the ambulance and take him to the hospital. They kept telling him it was for his own safety.
And that’s when he really became terrified and kind of lost it. He had been sounding pretty deranged before, but when he saw the ambulance, he completely freaked out. And why? Not because he might be committed, or lose his freedom, or get pumped full of some drugs, or anything like that. No, he lost it because he “[did] not have the money to pay for this.” He screamed this over and over and over again, practically sobbing as they loaded him into the ambulance. Begging and pleading to not be given medical help because of the financial disaster he knew it would cause. Heartbreaking.
Obama 2012, and fuck the rest.
Terrible to hear, but I’m confused as to how Obama or the Affordable Care Act would provide free emergency care to the homeless and mentality ill-population….. Doesn’t funding for mental health facilities fall under the State budget?
Oh hey, Obama. Isn’t that the guy who took the so-called “public option” off the table before it was even seriously considered, and wouldn’t even talk about single payer healthcare, and instead signed a deal that – while it does have some real benefits – also sold us all out to for-profit insurance companies?
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Jill Stein 2012, and fuck the rest.