24-Year-Old Cincinnati Man Dies of Toothache After Brilliantly Filling His Pain Medication Prescription Instead of Antibiotics

Folks should probably be clear about something first: A tooth extraction is not an expensive dental procedure. Indeed, as the ABC News report indicates, "a routine tooth extraction" costs about $80.00. And while it's a horribly needless waste of life, it's no one's fault but the man's himself, 24-year-old Kyle Willis, the father of a young girl. Willis decided to ride out the pain. When he was overcome by swelling he checked into the emergency room and the doctors gave him prescriptions for antibiotics and pain medication. Willis, apparently because he was "uninsured," bought the pain killers and blew off the antibiotics. Big mistake. Rudimentary health knowledge says buy the antibiotics and take some (cheap) generic ibuprofen for the pain and inflammation. To make matters worse, Willis had family members in the area. His aunt [...] is married to a successful local musician. Perhaps he could have borrowed a little money from loved ones. That's called individual responsibility. You always take care of your own, and when you need a hand you fall back on loved ones. When all else fails, there's charity. Of course, under our socialist welfare state, the historical culture of personal responsibility and self-sufficiency has been destroyed by the patrimonial socialist handout regime. Big government assumes that people are too stupid and weak to save for a rainy day, or to plan ahead for emergencies. Tucking away a few Jacksons wouldn't have killed this man. His ignorance and lack of discipline did. So dumb is this case that even über-socialist Matthew Yglesias has to begin his essay with a disclaimer, conceding that supreme stupidity is not a rationale for increasing the size and scope of government:

Now, clearly, this man made some sub-optimal choices here he’s not purely a victim of lack of health insurance. At the same time you have right before you a no-longer-living, no-longer-breathing example of the “push the patient to the edge of financial desperation” theory of health care cost controls. It turns out that the quality of a frightened, pain-wracked young man asked to make technical medical decisions under severe financial constraints is not very high. The social cost of 24 year-old fathers dying of eminently treatable tooth infections, by contrast, is gigantic.

Oh, give me a freakin' break! "Technical medical decisions"? Doctors gave Willis all he needed to get better. It's not a "technical medical decision" to choose pain killers over antibiotics --- it's gambling with your life and the future of your child. Oh, and the man was black --- so now I'm going to be attacked as RAAAAACIST for pointing out that stupidity knows no color.



Freakin' progressive "compassion" is killing society's least well prepared for success. And that's what's really sad about this case.



More imbecilic progressive "compassion" at The Reaction: "Reconciling Conservative "Logic" Is Like Pulling Teeth."



UPDATE: Lonely Conservative links: "Walmart Sells $4 Prescriptions." Also, at Scared Monkeys, "Cincinnati Man Dies of Tooth Infection … Liberal MSM Blames No Insurance."

Althouse links. Thanks!



And Dustbury!

Man Accused of Stalking via Twitter Claims Free Speech

At NYT, "Case of 8,000 Menacing Posts Tests Limits of Twitter Speech" (via Memeorandum).

Even the Buddha of compassion might have been distressed to be on the receiving end of the diatribes that William Lawrence Cassidy is accused of posting on Twitter.



They certainly rattled Alyce Zeoli, a Buddhist leader based in Maryland. Using an ever-changing series of pseudonyms, the authorities say, Mr. Cassidy published thousands of Twitter posts about Ms. Zeoli. Some were weird horror-movie descriptions of what would befall her; others were more along these lines: “Do the world a favor and go kill yourself. P.S. Have a nice day.”



Those relentless tweets landed Mr. Cassidy in jail on charges of online stalking and placed him at the center of an unusual federal case that asks the question: Is posting a public message on Twitter akin to speaking from an old-fashioned soapbox, or can it also be regarded as a means of direct personal communication, like a letter or phone call?



Twitter posts have fueled defamation suits in civil courts worldwide. But this is a criminal case, invoking a somewhat rarely used law on cyberstalking. And it straddles a new, thin line between online communications that can be upsetting — even frightening — and constitutional safeguards on freedom of expression.

Continue reading.



The stalking is not just on Twitter, but includes blog posts as well. The federal prosecutor handling the case likens the tweets, which are direct communications, and unsolicited, as "handwritten notes." These in turn may be found to constitute criminal harassment. Still, most folks see the prosecution as a stretch. See Doug Mataconis, "Is “Twitter Stalking” Free Speech?" Basically, the harassment has to be demonstrably threatening. In this case, clearly the lady's being stalked, and bad. But short of actually contact or evidence of some kind of violent plotting, it's better to stand up for speech. The solution is more speech. And as we've seen around here, progressives can't handle the truth, and when it's directed at them they blow past acceptable boundaries and engage in stalking behaviors that cross the line. Indeed, many a blogger has been forced offline from such trolling, and progressives count on the mob to destroy political enemies all while protected by the First Amendment. Just stand up to these idiots. They melt when faced with facts and logic, and they resort to lies, libel and destruction. ASFLs.