A Tragic Christmas Day Health Care Suicide
Dec 27th, 2009 | 19 responses
My life-partner, Doug, hails from Athens, GA, 70 miles up the road from where we live now. On Christmas day Doug was shocked and saddened by the death of Athens’ folk singer and songwriter Vic Chesnutt. Death by suicide ends Chesnutt’s heroic and tragic life story:
Vic Chesnutt, 45, a singer-songwriter of spare, idiosyncratic folk tunes tinged with melancholy, died Christmas day in Athens, Ga., after an intentional overdose of prescription muscle relaxants, a family spokesman said.
Paralyzed after a 1983 single-car accident when he was driving drunk at age 18, Mr. Chesnutt had limited use of his arms and hands but nonetheless carved out a career in music, which included being a guitarist. He was discovered in the late 1980s by REM frontman Michael Stipe, who championed his early recordings, and he gained the respect of music critics and fellow musicians who were struck by his darkly humorous songs.
Chesnutt is reported to have said that car accident focused him as a musician and poet. He had attempted suicide several times before, but his latest album included Flirted With You All My Life which he wrote as a breakup song with death. In it he expresses his wish to live.
Among the risk factors for suicide are physical illness and barriers to accessing mental health treatment. Among the protective factors is support from ongoing medical and mental health care relationships. Chesnutt had long-standing troubles with health insurance. Despite attempts to help:
In 1996 his songs were performed by Madonna, the Indigo Girls, Smashing Pumpkins, R.E.M. and others for “Sweet Relief II: The Gravity of the Situation” [link], an album that benefited the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund, a nonprofit group that offers medical support for musicians.
Just a few weeks ago he was a guest on Fresh Air with Terry Gross. In that interview he discussed his dire health insurance situation:
Mr. CHESNUTT: I have been amazed and confused by the health care debate. We need health care reform. There is no doubt about it, we really need health care reform in this country. Because it’s absurd that somebody like me has to pay so much, it’s just too expensive in this country. It’s just ridiculously expensive. That they can take my house away for kidney stone operation is -that’s absurd.
GROSS: Is that what you’re facing the possibility of now?
Mr. CHESNUTT: Yeah. I mean, it could – I’m not sure exactly. I mean, I don’t have cash money to pay these people. I tried to pay them. I tried to make payments and then they finally ended up saying, no, you have to pay us in full now. And so, you know, I’m not sure what exactly my options are. I just – I really – you know, my feeling is that I think they’ve been paid, they’ve already been paid $100,000 from my insurance company. That seems like plenty. I mean, this would pay for like five or six of these operations in any other country in the world. You know, it affects – I mean, right now I need another surgery and I’ve putting it off for a year because I can’t afford it. And that’s absurd, I think.
I mean, I could actually lose a kidney. And, I mean, I could die only because I cannot afford to go in there again. I don’t want to die, especially just because of I don’t have enough money to go in the hospital. But that’s the reality of it. You know, I have a preexisting condition, my quadriplegia, and I can’t get health insurance.
GROSS: Is it true you can’t get good health insurance?
Mr. CHESNUTT: I can’t get – I’m uninsurable. The only reason I have any insurance now is because I was on Capitol Records for a while. And I had excellent health insurance there. And then when I got dropped from Capitol, I Cobra’s(ph) my insurance for as long as it was legally possible. And then – and which was insanely expensive to cobra this very nice insurance. And then, when that ran out, the insurance company said they could offer me one last thing and that is hospitalization. It only covers hospital bills. That’s all it covers. And it’s still $500 a month. So, it doesn’t pay for my drugs, my doctors or anything like that. All it pays for is hospitalization. And yet, I still owe all this money on top of that.
The video above is Chesnutt performing Everything I Say in November for Canada’s The Neighbor’s Dog television series. A NYTimes review of Chesnutt’s October Bowery Ballroom appearance in New York:
Structurally, his songs are nothing fancy: bleak, flinty lyrics set to slow, folky melodies and basic chords — the makings, if Mr. Chesnutt were more conventional, of folk-rock. … The music moved slowly and even more slowly: a series of dirges methodically flooded with massed-guitar crescendos of tolling chords and distortion. … Mr. Chesnutt opened the set with “Everything I Say,” which begins, “The barn fell down since I saw it last/It’s rubble now, well so much for the past.”
News of Chesnutt’s condition first spread through the Twitter posts of singer Kristin Hersh, who has played with him. His Rolling Stone obituary. His LATimes obituary. His NYTimes obituary. May he rest in eternal peace.
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19 Responses to “A Tragic Christmas Day Health Care Suicide”
“He had attempted suicide several times before..”
So he finally did it and now we are going to blame anyone opposed to ObamaCare? Really?
May he rest in Peace, Joe. Thank you for detailing the life of this remarkable angel who wasnt able to stay. May all his singer and musician friends and family be comforted. That a young boy was crippled so deeply in an accident when 18, that he had been drunk, that he rose into music, is a miracle story. That he struggled so, is the sad part. That he rose up is the miracle.
There's at least one from Led Zep who will meet him and embrace him as brother.
dr.e
The article seems to be somewhat mis-labeled. He was fighting the company, but the problem stemmed as much from the high costs (“I really – you know, my feeling is that I think they’ve been paid, they’ve already been paid $100,000 from my insurance company.“) as with the insurance company itself. I understand the repulsion from the political angle, but it's still sad to lose a person, especially after he had overcome so much.
Certainly it is sad and sorry. Sad to see someone kill himself and sorry to try to use that to score a political point for ObamaCare.
My condolences flow genuinely to his friends, fans, and relatives.
DaMav – My own situation is similar to Chesnutt. I am disabled and wheelchair dependent from polio. I took early retirement from my employer at age 54 after 32 years of service. I simply could no longer handle the stess and travel that came with the job. After Cobra ran out, I was, like Chesnutt, uninsurable.There are not many jobs that a wheelchair person can handle that come with benefits. Fortunately, I was in a financial situation where in my high earning years I was able to save 60%-70% of my income. I thought I was set for life.
I quickly discovered that without Health Insurance, hospitals and providers can charge anything they like. In New Jersey, for example, hospital charges for the uninsured are 4-5 times what insurance companies pay.( to make up the deficiencies in insurance company, medicare and medicaid reimbursements) A trip to the emergency room usually ran $20,000 +. The 3 operations and hospitalizations that I had during this 10 year period without insurance cost me in excess of $400,000 out of pocket. If you have assets don't expect any financial compassion from the hospitals.
Nonehteless, I was able to absorb this cost and still am able to live comfortably. However, 2 months ago, I turned 65 and got Medicare. I can't tell you how much of a relief this is because my financial planning can now take place without needing to consider the very real possiblitlity of financial ruin due to health.
While I never contemplated suicide, I completely understand what drove Chesnutt to his decision. If you have a chronic illness, it consumes your life. Like Chesnutt, I assume he lived in pain every day since age 18. To add the stress of no health insurance on top of the pain of illness is something that can tax the most hardy soul.
p.s. Criticizing Windish for introducing a political angle to this story with your own political commentary on Obamacare is the “pot calling the kettle, black”.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by TMV, KEVIN DUNSFORD. KEVIN DUNSFORD said: A Tragic Christmas Day Health Care Suicide: The Moderate VoiceAll it pays for is hospitalization. And yet, I still … http://bit.ly/7Qp4iJ [...]
Except the pot in this case didn't exploit someone's suicide to try to score a political point. Ever, as a matter of fact.
jdledell,
Thank you for sharing this. Your dignity and courage — in facing those experiences and in describing them here — is both inspiring and humbling.
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Joe's headline looks justified, in-light of the interview transcript. The health care question may not have been the sole factor, but was certainly a major factor. If this is “scoring a political point” – whatever that means – then score away, Joe. I'm sorry the world lost a musical talent.
Of course there is a political angle to this, it's absurd to pretend it's not a legitimate one either. The republicans don't give a crap about people like Chesnutt, neither do the insurance companies. It's no mystery, and no amount of apologist BS changes that either. Let's at least make an effort to be honest about it.
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Well said, redbus! Bravo!
I'd be a lot more supportive if anyone addressed the cost in some realistic manner. My dad was telling me about a bill he saw from the 1950's, around $150 (about $1350 in 2008 dollars) for a knee operation, total bill including the hospital charges. Do you think prices like that would have killed him? Or maybe you think that the insurance companies have a 90% overhead.
The short answer exists in the pursuit of higher standards, the shortage of which in fact goes to the source of so many of our problems. If Canada can do it then the US can too. Inventing reasons why not is easy. And btw, we'll never put a man on the moon. Too expensive, too much fantasy, too impossible..
I don't remember the moon having a lobbyist group trying to stop us.
As I said, “inventing reasons why not is easy”. Where would we be if everyone bought into defeatist logic when confronted with serious challenges? Think WWII for another example..
There's a difference between defeatism (it can't be done) and realism (they're not doing it). It can be done right, but that's not what we've got in front of us. The current plan can be distilled down to a simple idea: throw money at it. That's failed to work in public education (we now have the world's most expensive mediocre system), secondary education (the student loan program has fueled amazing increases in college costs, but not quality) and medicine (Medicare and Medicaid). As I've said many times before, specialists and drug companies are sucking up far more than the insurance companies, but all three are getting coddled.
Agreed. It would be nice to see Joe-taxpayer get “coddled”… for a change.