Yesterday the Associated Press reported that a 59 year-old North Carolina man robbed a bank so he would be sent to jail where he would be eligible to receive free health care. According to the man's attorney, James Verone was a previously law-abiding citizen, that is before robbing the bank.
But in an act of desperation, due to serious health issues, and having nowhere to turn because he was unemployed, Mr. Verone robbed a bank for $1.
"This is a man who is a veteran, a man who had worked his whole life for the American dream," Neece told the Associated Press. "But that dream has now become the American nightmare, not only for him but for numerous people."
He has been charged with one count of larceny from a person. He was being held in the Gaston County jail on $2,000 bond. But Verone doesn't want to post bond because he wants to be in jail for the medical care.
I know, I know, the man did not have to resort to this act of lunacy to get health treatment as I assume that even in a right to work state like North Carolina there is currently some kind of health safety net before the Affordable Care Act kicks in for able bodied adults in 2014, but it only goes to show how desperate people in Mr. Verone's shoes perceive their predicament to be.
But before you scoff and write off this anecdote as knee jerk liberal hyperbole, may I suggest you first lose your job, lose your health insurance and yourself contract a serious disease before you start pointing your judgmental "I Got Mine Why the Hell Can't the Poor, Powerless, Defenseless and Vulnerable Get Theirs!" fingers. True people of faith, real Christians, do not ridicule and blame and judge the less fortunate, they attempt to understand and help them. So my advice to all right-wing moral majority Republicans is to become born-again, but this time with real Christian values not the Gospel of Prosperity preached by the mega-church, t.v. evangelist money grubbers. Amen.
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