By I don’t think this is the best case to make for why the USA needs national health care:
When an ambulance brought Tillmon Webb home from the hospital after he hurt his knee in March, paramedics warned the then 550-pound man he probably wouldn’t be able to get up from his recliner if they put him there, his wife said.Webb told them to leave him there anyway. He would sit in that recliner, slowly dying, for the next eight months. Finally, paramedics were called back to his Greenwood home on Wednesday because he was in a lot of pain.
Webb’s body was physically stuck to the power recliner and firefighters had to cut him from the chair to take him to the hospital. He died a few hours later, his body covered with sores and a “very bad odor,” according to a police report.
Webb, 33, didn’t ask for help for all those months, because he was ashamed and didn’t have health insurance, said his wife, Ada. [AZ Central]
Could you imagine what the health care penalty would be for this guy if he lived in Japan?
Anyway I doubt health insurance had anything to do with this guy dieing in his chair:
He slept and used the bathroom in his chair and she cleaned it every day. The former preacher would post sermons online from the chair, and it wasn’t long before he decided he was ready to go home to the Lord, she said.“After he sat there in that one spot for a week, he was embarrassed. It was like he already knew what was going to happen,” Ada Webb said.
Webb’s mother was the one who placed the final call to paramedics. Not only did crews have to cut apart the chair, but they had to cut a hole in the wall of the couple’s mobile home about 70 miles west of Columbia to get him out. A police report said he weighed about 800 pounds, but his wife said he was closer to 500 pounds.
So the wife feeds this guy and lets him defecate for months in the recliner and his mom ends up having to be the one to call 911 and according to the article the authorities are not investigating. What a loving wife. 
Just to further show what a redneck love story this is:
Webb died on the couple’s second anniversary. They met four years ago on MySpace, and Ada Webb said she didn’t see a man who weighed more than 500 pounds, but instead saw a guy who loved the Lord and had a big heart.
He may not have had health insurance, but if I was the authorities I would be checking what life insurance policies were out on this guy.
I guess you can add this to Chickenhead’s list, about things to like about Korea, I have never even heard of a 550 pound ajushi before much less one needing to be cut out of their home by the fire department due to being so fat.
9:39 pm on November 19th, 2009 1
The local fire and rescue squad paid an annual visit to the school recently. The stretcher in the ambulance looked rather small, so I asked the paramedic about the maximum load. "600 pounds," he replied, adding that calls to move very obese patients were becoming more routine and he was experiencing back pain as a result, for some patients had to be carried downstairs or lifted out of awkward places like a bathtub. Larger cities are now buying specially equipped wide-load ambulances, and some are passing the cost onto the patient by charging more for trips that require using a larger vehicle.
9:47 pm on November 19th, 2009 2
Sad story. I feel sorry for those folks who have a serious weight problem. He sounded like a nice guy and was only 33. American has to do something about the Obesity problem. It has to be related to our fast food, cola drinking, and eating habits. The Roman empire may have fell because of lead poisioning from their drinking buckets. America may collaspe because of obesity. This should be our number one national priority. Maybe the President will realize the problem when he returns from Asia and see all the obese folks at the airport – Not gonna happen.
11:24 pm on November 19th, 2009 3
"I feel sorry for those folks who have a serious weight problem"
Why? No one held them prisoner and forced 18 Big Macs and 27 Big Gulps a day down their glutonous throats every day.
Why waste your sorrow? You wan't to feel sorry for someone then feel sorry for the thousands of dying prisoners in the Aushwitz of the Orient a few hundred miles north of Seoul. If only they had health insurance!!!
11:25 pm on November 19th, 2009 4
Damn… typo
. Ignore that. 
12:19 am on November 20th, 2009 5
Just about sums up the US nicely.
Consume consume, take on debt and more debt, get bigger and bigger, until it pops.
1:10 am on November 20th, 2009 6
The first time I went to Cinemark in Brazil and ordered a Coke they asked me which one: small, medium or big coup? I asked the small coup than they gave me a 300ml coup of Coke.
In Brazil small coup is 150ml so I asked them to give me the 150ml coup but they said that was their small so either a buy it or just give up buying coke.
When it came to popcorn it was the same situation: their small popcorn was not exactly small according to Brazilian standard, but since it was an American franchise they were using American standards in Brazil. So guess what? I gave up buying coke and popcorn.
American food companies turned Americans into consumption machines and the beneficiaries of this commercial strategy are the diet and health companies.
RIP Mr. Webb. The food and health industries in America have nothing but good memories about you.
2:08 am on November 20th, 2009 7
And the wife is like China who keeps feeding the US.
2:10 am on November 20th, 2009 8
This reminds me of "What's Eating Gilbert Grape
".
3:41 am on November 20th, 2009 9
Pete, what you do is Stop Feeding them.
If it was drug abuse and the wife was getting him drugs, what would you say?
If the guy was an alcoholic and the wife was getting his bottle for him, what would you say?
"he sounded like a nice guy". Pete, he couldn't wipe his own assss. He pretty much HAD to be a nice guy.
The President? Really Pete? We need the President to tell us to stop eating?
National Priority? If his wife loved him, it should have been HER priority.
It is an enabler problem.
3:43 am on November 20th, 2009 10
Sooo True.
3:47 am on November 20th, 2009 11
Tom, I would love to say something about the pride and strength of the US right now.
But with that wasted life as an example of america, I just can't.
3:49 am on November 20th, 2009 12
Good comparison by the way. It fits.
4:46 am on November 20th, 2009 13
Some advise for any wife who has a lazy, fat, worthless husband who lays around the house all day. Get your worthless, fat, lazy husband to drink about 5 cans of redbull about 0800 and smash the t.v. into a million pieces.
Why do people have to bring religion into something like this?
5:28 am on November 20th, 2009 14
Another thought
What a sorry excuse of a "man". To die in your chair because you'er over 500 pounds of fat and your wife has to clean your chair after you crap in it.
But then again, his wife didn't love him enough to stop delivering food to that chair.
I wouldn't call it sad. I call it stupid.
10:53 am on November 20th, 2009 15
C.O. -good grief- you have identified a diet that consist of 18,450 calories per day and 4,428,000 calories in an 8 month period. You burn 1.6 calories per hour sitting at rest (or stuck in a recliner) or 38.4 calories per day. You would have to run almost 18 hours per day at an 8 mile/hour pace (144 miles per day or 34,560 miles in 8 months) to keep from gaining weight. I guess you could drink diet soda in the big gulps.
12:30 pm on November 20th, 2009 16
Religion and Crazy go together like Chocolate and Peanut Butter. No offense to all you Resses Cup Lovers.
2:55 pm on November 20th, 2009 17
feel sorry for the pall bearers.
3:52 pm on November 20th, 2009 18
What was his nickname?
Lay-Z-Boy or Webb of da Seat?
4:22 pm on November 20th, 2009 19
You can do better CH. I know you can!
6:37 pm on November 20th, 2009 20
…or Mr. Creosote, from "Monty Python- the Meaning of Life"… or that guy from the Austin Powers series of movies…
1:38 pm on November 21st, 2009 21
May karma not be paying attention to all of you mocking the death of someone whose most embarrassing time in life become public fodder for the whole world to see.
1:44 pm on November 21st, 2009 22
True, but we often mock those whose purpose here seems to be of little or no value, other than to mock the abundance and good life given to them, so they can commit suicide through glutany.
Yes, its sad, but does he deserve better?
1:46 pm on November 21st, 2009 23
You can argue with me, Gerry, but you'll just piss off karma.
2:39 pm on November 21st, 2009 24
LOL, my 'karma' has been very good to me through out my adult life. I suspect it may even be as good, if not better in my next life.
I do not live my life in fear, but make my judgements (and yes, I do judge), based on my life and observations of others who live their lives.
Experience has shown me that many people who continue to exercise bad or poor judgement in their own lives, often end up on the bottom.
I have spent much of my life wondering why people would continue to do so when education and common sense would deem they do otherwise.
Obviously a poor gene pool and childhood experiences from equaly poor parenting have much to do with it.(or at least that is what I have gathered, all other things being equal). There are other factors as well.
If karma has any validity in a next life, then I should be a wiser, more intelligent human being.
2:46 pm on November 21st, 2009 25
I believe that karma understands that a wasted life is a wasted life.
I would never make fun of those who suffer and starve in DPRK. With them in mind, I have no trouble making fun of a man that is such a lazy loser that he
EATS UNTILL HE DIES.
If you want to feel sorry for him, got ahead. I will save my pity for those
that thru no fault of their own, don't have a full belly.
Have you thought about what kind of a person sits and eats and craps in the chair? I think "Karma" agrees with me and came a calling!
Having an injury that hinders movement is tough. I've had a major operation.
I have ALSO had a foot operation. I did gain SOME weight. But I got up as soon as I could and started moving. Karma has rewarded me according to my effort. Karma rewarded him—according to his LACK of effort.
Karma and I are good friends
I hope Karma is pissed off at his wife. What kind of woman must she be. She helped her man eat untill death.
His Mommy had to call for help? WTH was the wife doing?
His most embarrassing time was HIS OWN DAMN FAULT.
A person is responsible for their own actions, and lack of actions.
I know we don't teach that any longer, but it is still true.
500+ pounds?! There is no excuse for that. None except no self respect and too lazy to care.
7:07 am on November 22nd, 2009 26
I bought a coke one time and only drank half of it. Another time I bought a bucket of popcorn and only ate a little of it. (get the idea?)
8:28 am on November 22nd, 2009 27
I understand your point Lemmy, but you had to pay money for the rest of coke and popcorn you had to throw away latter. Paying money to make garbage?
9:32 am on November 22nd, 2009 28
You are certainly true Dr. Yu. I guess that's the way it goes.
3:41 pm on November 22nd, 2009 29
I agree with Retired GI on this. People in the US eat WAY to fcking much for the low amount of exercise they do. Its like they think its their god given right to just eat themselves into a food coma.
And YES it is THEIR FAULT if their eating like that. They need to learn to just say NO to the extra food. No one needs three box's of friend chicken for dinner.
3:50 pm on November 22nd, 2009 30
That is why I tend to buy the smallest portion possible for many things. The American food companies just provide the crack, its the consumers decision to actually partake of it. I wish everyone would stop making excuse's for other people's decisions.
He ate too much food, he died because of it, that is what he gets.
3:59 pm on November 22nd, 2009 31
Its not just the US, its most every developed country including a rapidly rising number of obese in China as well. As usual the US gets the rap, while other countries view it as prosperity.