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Richard Lynch, an awesome PHP community guy and former colleague needs our help

richardlynch.blogspot.com

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Re: Richard Lynch, an awesome PHP community guy and former colleague needs our help

#111

Post by Trufa »

atwebb wrote: post #44
donohoe wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Done - and anyone else reading this should do. It takes seconds and you won't even miss the 3 lattes it could buy you.

I was pretty surprised at how easy PayPal has made it. I know that people prefer other services and the reasons they do, but at least PP has been moving forward in their ease of integration. Noticed it on Bandcamp recently as well. Just type amount, enter email and password then confirm and done (assuming you've got PP setup already).

I work with PayPal and to be honest my dislike doesn't come from the user experience but the developer side, the api, the tools, the interface, they are all broken, it is amazingly demotivating.

Re: Richard Lynch, an awesome PHP community guy and former colleague needs our help

#112

Post by fencepost »

rubiquity wrote: post #48

Could someone he trusts and someone capable of setting up a cryptocurrency account do so for him? I imagine a community like Dogecoin would help any way that they can.

Are Dogecoins sufficiently valuable and liquid/convertible to be worth it? In particular, how reasonable is the process of converting them into US$?

Re: Richard Lynch, an awesome PHP community guy and former colleague needs our help

#113

Post by zem »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #60
mildtrepidation wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normally I'd jump in on the practicality bandwagon, but this really is not constructive. People who are going to pray will; people who are going to donate will. Your denigration of their faith, justified or not (and we'll never really know until we die), helps no one, particularly in this context.

Nobody's denigrating his faith, as much as his transparent attempt to leverage it for social credibility by advertising his piety on Hacker News while (evidently) doing nothing actually helpful. If that's not worthy of denigration, take it up with Jesus himself, who said pretty much the same thing.

it's not an attempt for social credibility, it's a way of expressing sympathy. seriously, it's such a common way of saying "i have read about what you say and wish you well" that you have to be particularly cynical to read it as a show of piety.

Re: Richard Lynch, an awesome PHP community guy and former colleague needs our help

#114

Post by gmazzotti »

DasIch wrote: post #77
piyush_soni wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In USA it's still much better. In many countries including India for example, people pay taxes for their whole life but if they lack money in the end, there's no health/food/shelter security - you are basically on your own. Legislative Bills are there, but they are just that - dormant bills. Nothing exists in reality.

The fact that you have to compare the USA to a developing country to be able to say that "it's still much better" speaks volumes.

I am also from a developing country (Uruguay) but if any of my family ever has cancer all our concern will be in the emotional issues, the economic issue are already resolve: basically the health system coveres all diseases that you could get.

I do not understand the countries that don´t have this, it is just logical that if you pay when you are healthy you must be 100% covered when you are sick (without excuses or having to justify anything). The most strange thing is that what I pay for my health insurance is less of what I heard it is pay in USA (I pay 70 USD per month) but the difference is big: I live assured that whatever happens I'll be covered, no disease will make me lose my house.

The problem is not about beeing a developing country or not, it is about political decisions that obligate insurances to do what they must do.

Re: Richard Lynch, an awesome PHP community guy and former colleague needs our help

#115

Post by hueving »

jtreminio wrote: post #83
wtbob wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's so sad that the country where Richard lived, worked and paid taxes for about 30 years can't provide for him. I'm not sure why your first instinct is to think that he should rely on his country rather than on his family and friends.

Because he paid taxes to his government, not his friends.

Not to be rude, but that doesn't obligate the government to provide that particular service. Just because I pay taxes doesn't obligate the government to provide me a house. Why is that the case for health care?

Re: Richard Lynch, an awesome PHP community guy and former colleague needs our help

#116

Post by colechristensen »

amix wrote: post #104

I donated $50, but I really wish US (and other countries) would reconsider their broken healthcare systems. My dad died of cancer a few years ago and I am really glad we lived in Denmark when he got it - - with a great public healthcare system. He lived 2 years with his cancer, which is a lot when you are counting days. Not many normal people can afford these things (as each of my dads treatments cost about 20.000USD…

I don't particularly see this as being a strong problem with American healthcare. You can buy health insurance to pay for any and all medical expenses. The healthcare system is broken if you do an honest day's work and can't afford insurance, but that's not what we're talking about here. There is a reason that most of the best hospitals in the world are American, and the way we fund our healthcare is that reason. Yes there are plenty of efficiencies to be improved, and much in the way of helping everyone access affordable care. However, you're never going to have Americans shifting away from exchanging dollars for doctors.

Re: Richard Lynch, an awesome PHP community guy and former colleague needs our help

#117

Post by overgard »

amix wrote: post #104

I donated $50, but I really wish US (and other countries) would reconsider their broken healthcare systems. My dad died of cancer a few years ago and I am really glad we lived in Denmark when he got it - - with a great public healthcare system. He lived 2 years with his cancer, which is a lot when you are counting days. Not many normal people can afford these things (as each of my dads treatments cost about 20.000USD…

I donated $100, and yeah, our healthcare system is a goddamn travesty. I don't get it. If you're fortunate to live long enough, the one thing that's guaranteed to eventually happen is you're going to get sick in a very expensive manner. It's not an "if" question, it's a "when" question. I don't think that should mean financial ruin. People against universal healthcare must think they're just immune to ever getting sick or something.

Re: Richard Lynch, an awesome PHP community guy and former colleague needs our help

#118

Post by piyush_soni »

halfdan wrote: post #90
piyush_soni wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Thanks to India's affordable health care, we don't have to be dependent on this national scam called health insurance. We just go to doctors, they give us treatment, we pay money, that's it. I remember how here in US I had to go to a doctor to be told "You don't have any disease, that happens to everybody" (no diagnosis) and charged $400. Insurance paid $300, I paid $100.

Right.. That "national scam" is working great all over Europe. It's cool when you can pay your treatments, but cancer treatments are in the 6 figure range - enjoy paying that from you bank account.

The funny thing is, at least here in the US, even if you have medical insurance you are totally ripped off your pockets if you have something like cancer. Mostly, you just don't pay the price which was anyway artificially inflated by this scam I'm talking about. There was an article only a few days back about this guy who had his appendix treated: http://imgur.com/a/WIfeN

He had to pay $11k out of the total $55k bill, rest was paid by insurance. ($7000 for a CT scan? $4500 worth of Anesthesia? I'd be surprised if one still doesn't think these are artificially inflated prices)

I'm not sure how much would he be charged if this whole insurance thing was not there - may be ~$11k?

(Just for the curious: In India, that operation in the best of hospitals would have cost him may be around $1600 without insurance. With insurance, he'd save most of even that. )

Re: Richard Lynch, an awesome PHP community guy and former colleague needs our help

#119

Post by suprgeek »

joshmn wrote: post #65
bestham wrote: post #9

It's so sad that the country where Richard lived, worked and paid taxes for about 30 years can't provide for him. I'm glad to be able to help. But what happens to those that don't reach the front page of HN? No one enduring the stress of a terminal cancer should have to stress about getting ends to meet during their last months alive. EVER

My family is one of them (stressing about getting ends to meet). My momma, 55, otherwise ridiculously healthy, has terminal brain cancer among other things. She was diagnosed five days before her 55th birthday (10/25) this year -- [seemingly] out of the blue. While her and my father have insurance (through United Health Group), there's no smooth sailing because her treatments are so "specialized". I, at 22, cleaned o…

Very inspiring post. I think it will be hard for me to look at Ramen Noodles and not think about this for a while.

Paraphrasing from a a recent movie "Every one should live by a code...glad to know that yours is Family."

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