If by now you haven’t seen the poignant Breaking Bad meme, now is your chance. To reiterate for emphasis, All you need to know about the American Healthcare System is that there’s a popular TV series where a man turns to cooking industrial qualities of crystal meth in order to pay his hospital bills.
It’s expensive to stay alive. And it is still particularly expensive to die. So what do you do? Consciously make zero effort to achieve either so that those pennies can be appropriately pinched?
Following Lamar Odom’s early October drug overdose and subsequent brain damage, he has been left to fight for his life. The trials, though, won’t cease with him getting back to his feet. He’ll be saddled with an outrageous medical bill proving that not even America’s richest are immune to the devastating effects of the private healthcare system.
With his divorce to Khloe Kardashian on pause while he recovers, Khloe has been making his decisions, much to the concern of those around him. As Radar Online reports:
“Khloe’s managing most of it, but to her money’s no object and she’s signing him up for the best treatments money can buy,” the insider said. “The fact they’re still only married in name has everyone on Lamar’s side freaking out because they know he’s going to be left with all these bills when she finally kicks him out.”
Like anything, it’s a double-edged sword. He needs these treatments to stay alive. But it’s expensive to stay alive.
Even as a very wealthy former ex-NBA star, the NBA’s 2011 Sixth Man of the Year, the totals keep climbing:
By the end of the year, he’ll have easily made at least a $10m dent in his $55m fortune.
And he’s still nowhere near medical independence. It’s not unheard of for an ex-NBA player to file for bankruptcy due to excessive spending but something is fucked if the cause of that is a fucking medical tab.