
A Nobel Prize-winning physicist sold his medal for $765,000 to pay medical bills - pseudolus
https://www.vox.com/health-care/2018/10/4/17936626/leon-lederman-nobel-prize-medical-bills
======
refurb
Ummm.... this would happen in Canada as well. Nursing home care is subsidized,
but only after you have exhausted your own personal assets or income.

My grandfather went into a nursing home in Canada and the gov’t took 80% of
his pension income and then subsidized the rest. That includes savings as
well.

------
rukittenme
This will be unpopular...

He was rejected from _our_ universal healthcare system because of the
astronomical costs of keeping a 96 year old man (with a life ending disease)
alive.

Those costs exist under every system regardless of whether or not the
_customer_ sees those costs.

This is not a defense of our "private" healthcare system. This is a defense of
our _public_ healthcare system. They made the rational decision to focus their
resources on younger people with better chances of recovery. Dr. Lederman made
the rational choice to sell his Nobel prize to extend his life. At least that
option was available to him! The same can't be said for people like Charlie
Gard.

~~~
IC4RUS
This is a good point - and something ignored by some advocates of universal
healthcare (I'm partial to the idea of universal healthcare, but would like to
see more honest debate of the issue).

~~~
extragood
Me too. I spend more time in hospitals than the average person my age due to a
hereditary condition.

I try very hard to stay well and do precisely what I'm told by medical
professionals.

Many people that I've met in the hospital do not. They're often older and
should know better, but they'll hear "No foods or liquids", and sneak in beef
jerky before surgery anyway.

That's just the tip of the iceberg.

Universal healthcare will need to cover all of these people who don't listen
to medical advice, and will return because of it.

From a private insurance or single payer insurance perspective there may not
be a difference between the two.

All I know is that I must have good medical insurance at all times, otherwise
I will be screwed in so many ways.

------
kwhitefoot
If well known, well off, high profile people like Lederman get wiped out by
ill health and no one cares just think how much worse it must be for the more
average person. I really enjoyed his "God Particle" book. RIP.

~~~
yostrovs
He sold a lot of those books. What happened to the money? It's not like he
didn't do well as a scientist and director of a major Department of Energy
lab, and $1 million that comes with the Nobel.

------
pmdulaney
You would think that University of Chicago could sacrifice 0.1% of their
endowment to help out someone who had brought them so much prestige.

~~~
jmcgough
They probably weren't even aware of his situation when this happened.

~~~
pmdulaney
Yeah, you're probably right...

------
onion2k
To face a horrible illness and have that be compounded by having to give up a
symbol of your life's biggest achievement must have been awful. The UK isn't
perfect, but I'm very glad to live in a country where this sort of thing
doesn't happen.

~~~
kwhitefoot
How do you come to that conclusion? The UK government won't fund a nursing
home unless you have exhausted most of your assets. See, for instance,
[https://www.carehome.co.uk/fees/feesadvice.cfm](https://www.carehome.co.uk/fees/feesadvice.cfm).
I dare say it might still be better than the US but I don't know for certain.

------
jackconnor
Anyone else surprised he could get so much for it?

~~~
pseudolus
A Russian billionaire paid USD$4.1 million for James Watson's Nobel Prize. In
an act of stunning decency he apparently returned the medal to James Watson.

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/dec/09/russian-
bill...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/dec/09/russian-billionaire-
usmanov-james-watson-nobel-prize-return-scientist)

~~~
jackconnor
Wow that's amazing

------
stereo
> The United States routinely has health care prices well-above the rest of
> the country.

Above the rest of itself?

~~~
trumped
Yes, you need to shop for medical care, the costs can be drastically different
from one hospital to the next... I think there's a website designed to help
you do that but I can't find it right now.

------
zone411
Very sad news. Dr. Lederman was an excellent teacher in addition to being a
researcher. He encouraged lecture participation and making educated guesses (I
had a freshman year class with him and I didn't even know he won a Nobel until
the end of the semester).

------
jakelarkin
sensational headline ...

tenured professors are the top 1% of academia and they have a pension no?

maybe he sold it to live out his final days with premium care.

maybe they decided his surviving wife would've rather had a liquid estate
instead of a shiny medal in a closet.

~~~
Balgair
Mostly no, they do not. PIs are typically paid little, given their worth on
the market for their skills. Even though he was 'famous', he got his Nobel at
~70 years old, meaning that he spent most of his earning years 'unrecognized'.
I know you can look up any University of California professor's earnings here:
[https://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/state-
pay/art...](https://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/state-
pay/article2642161.html)

For instance Professor Vickram Chandra of UC Berkeley [0] made ~$91k in 2016
[1]. Other professors make more, like Professor Alexandrova of UCLA who make
~$146k in 2016 [2]. You can poke around the UCs and compare. Do remember that
most PIs labor in grad school for ~7 years, earning barely anything.

I do not know of other databases for other universities that do this, but many
US states have sunshine laws that make professor's salaries public
information. I know that Colorado also mandates that all public employee's
emails are public information too and I think other states do this as well,
though I do not have a list of them.

[0][https://english.berkeley.edu/profiles/22](https://english.berkeley.edu/profiles/22)

[1][https://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/state-
pay/art...](https://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/state-
pay/article2642161.html?appSession=887L947CK3UM98E4DB378779Z503C4T6TB5OJD2OJ495LF1Z091E7RD5BR409ZKV79G3UD4N4ITQ59HA712A8GKV9TKJ5RVF757MHBY9O6J6JO1335OAS2G5NHH1822F&RecordID=493784&PageID=8&PrevPageID=2&cpipage=1&CPIsortType=&CPIorderBy=&cbCurrentRecordPosition=8&Mod0LinkToDetails=True)

[2][https://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/state-
pay/art...](https://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/state-
pay/article2642161.html?appSession=6B3RKRX1H8VB3IZ31YUKSNP966M6LA9697C9GSP7250BB7CEW9D7607C763RRFMZWEG7R4T2OI1W88L50X9M48768FH16L85SVZ2SX2N5S2H93C726P0P38HI3TV5901&RecordID=329255&PageID=8&PrevPageID=2&cpipage=1&CPIsortType=&CPIorderBy=&cbCurrentRecordPosition=1&Mod0LinkToDetails=True)

~~~
jakelarkin
the question the article raises is not whether theyre paid their worth but
rather whether theyre dying paupers

I looked up my friends PI at Berkeley. (no Nobel) $300k

pension 50-75% of salary + retiree healthcare benefits

hard to say someone in that position is going to end up destitute unless they
make terrible life choices.

------
nunez
This is extremely surprising to me. Healthcare plans from universities tend to
be extremely good. How did this happen?

------
jiveturkey
only in america, indeed! in many countries, he'd just die at home.

------
ryandrake
Hundreds of years from now, when this time period is documented in history
books, my great great grandchildren will look back on our greed-driven for-
profit healthcare system as a shameful black mark in American history, just
like we look back at the history of slavery today. They’ll ask “How could a
democracy have allowed random, treatable health conditions to ruin people
financially?” They’ll be horrified by how greedy and barbaric we are as a
people, same as how we look back at the Civil War era society that promoted
slavery.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
I think comparing this to slavery, the Indian wars, Jim Crow, etc. more than a
little hyperbolic.

There's a big difference between using violence to control other people, take
their land or systemic disenfranchisement and the best healthcare being
affordable to a big chunk of the population.

Things that are Really Bad(TM) involve people actively doing things that we
consider highly immoral today. Healthcare is just a case of failing to find a
workable solution. The situations are very different.

~~~
detcader
It's deeply immoral to use violence to control people. It's deeply immoral to
hoard money and resources (to "be rich" in today's language) and ensure the
system of resource hoarding continues over generations through lobbying and
corruption. That's the extent of the comparison -- the magnitude of the
immorality -- and I think it's fair?

~~~
nonbel
>"It's deeply immoral to hoard money and resources"

This sounds like "it's deeply immoral to plan ahead" to me.

~~~
detcader
To me, there's planning ahead, with a large emergency fund and survival
supplies for one's family, and then there's hoarding money and resources.

"When you start talking about whether it is moral to be rich, you end up
heading down some difficult logical paths. If I am obligated to use my wealth
to help people, am I not obligated to keep doing so until I am myself a
pauper? Surely this obligation attaches to _anyone_ who consumes luxuries they
do not need, or who has some savings that they are not spending on malaria
treatment for children. But the central point I want to make here is that the
moral duty becomes greater the more wealth you have. If you end up with a
$50,000 a year or $100,000 a year salary, we can debate what amount you should
spend on helping other people. But if you earn $250,000 or 1 million, it’s
quite clear that the bulk of your income should be given away. You can live
very comfortably on $100,000 or so _and_ have luxury and indulgence, so
anything beyond is almost _indisputably_ indefensible." ~ Nathan Robinson, _It
's Basically Just Immoral To Be Rich_

~~~
nonbel
Or you can save all that money to work on your own projects like curing
cancer. Eg, tens or hundreds of billions of dollars are being wasted every
year on crappy (not even reproducible in principle) medical research:

[https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2016/01/14/paul-glasziou-and-
iain-...](https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2016/01/14/paul-glasziou-and-iain-
chalmers-is-85-of-health-research-really-wasted/)

How do you expect anyone to compete with the government and fund useful
medical research if they aren't allowed to accumulate enough wealth to compete
with the tidal wave of crap that governments are producing? You need to
"hoard" at least a couple hundred million dollars to even hope to compete with
that.

~~~
detcader
Maybe we can agree if people in positions like Larry Ellison's or Elon Musk's
were hoarding money with the intention of funding medical research, setting up
entities that make it difficult-to-impossible to blow it all on buying a
Hawaiian island or lifting a car into space for entertainment, then we
wouldn't be having this exchange.

If you look at the latest news stories about Memorial Sloan Kettering
(ProPublica is a place to start) and conclude that the government should
minimize involvement in medical research for the betterment humankind Because
Competition... you will certainly find plenty of friends, I suppose

~~~
nonbel
I'm not saying competition is good for medical research, but having done
medical research I am well aware of the unbelievable rate at which crappy
papers are being published. And then when you try to publish a paper you're
expected to somehow address all these previous crappy papers... We simply need
some alternative to the current system and they are all being drowned out
because they simply cant compete funding-wise.

Also, think about Elon Musk with 22 billion
([https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/elon-r-
musk/](https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/elon-r-musk/)). His
entire wealth is what governments currently waste on crappy medical research
every couple months.

Lets say NIH is producing 99.99% crap (about 1 in 10k papers is useful) at
~$30 billion per year. Elon musk could set up MIH (Musk Institutes of Health)
that is 100x more efficient (producing 1/100th the papers, but that are "only"
99% crap) for ~$300 million/year. After 73 years, about one human lifetime,
the fund would be bankrupt. That's why I say you need to accumulate at least a
couple hundred million dollars to hope to have an effect.

------
howeyc
The fact that losing the birth-lottery and getting sick can make someone
financially-poor through absolutely no fault of their own is astonishing.

That so many people I personally know in America are absolutely fine with this
is something that blows my mind. I think it's insane, but I'm a "socialist"
Canadian who shouldn't be pushing my crazy ideas on the southerners.

~~~
as300
This story isn't really about "losing the birth lottery", so to speak. Its
about someone not being able to afford nursing home care.

The fact is that the US spends much of its money on caring for the elderly
already, and there is, as the article notes, medicaid for those who cant
afford to pay for nursing home care. As a result, im a bit confused as to why
he had to sell his medal.

~~~
Brockenstein
It might be along the lines that you have to have a minimum of assets to and
money to qualify for some of those things. You know to prevent middle class
and wealthy people from abusing the system designed for people who can't
afford care.

Having something that you could sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars
therefore may be a disqualifer.

------
creaghpatr
>The cost of receiving care in a nursing home can also present a significant
burden. A private room in a nursing facility costs, on average, $7,698 per
month. And Medicare, which covers the vast majority of Americans over 65,
generally does not cover long-term nursing care.

>Many Americans do end up getting Medicaid to cover nursing home bills — but
that often requires selling off significant assets and dwindling down savings
in order to fall below the public program’s income requirements.

The costs are so high is because much of that money goes to subsidizing
Medicare and Medicaid, hence the socialist aspect of having to downsize your
assets to qualify.

~~~
patient_zero
Hospital costs are high... because of medicaid? You sure you don't want to
trot out the old chestnut that they are also high because we're subsidizing
the rest of the world's low medical costs? Pull the other one.

Also the last sentence you wrote doesn't make sense. Please justify your use
of "socialist aspect of downsizing assets to qualify".

~~~
Brockenstein
I think he's trying to dog socialism by attaching it to the wealth
requirements for qualifying for medicare/medicaid. IE you can't have hundreds
of thousands of dollars in asestes and property and qualify. I don't perceive
this as a problem with socialism, so much as preventing people that could pay
for care trying to leech off government programs because they don't wanna and
are butt hurt because poor people don't just die in a gutter.

------
squozzer
We should consider the possibility that Dr. Lederman's financial problems
happened _by design_.

After all, why should ordinary people be allowed to slowly amass modest
fortunes to pass onto their heirs?

If you want to know who is truly elite in America, see whose debts cannot be
discharged through bankruptcy.

~~~
toast0
The way Medicaid works is they'll pay for a nursing home once you run out of
money. They also can claw back some related person gifts (or other
transactions) that happened within the past few years.

If you have a lot of assets you want to pass to your heirs, but not enough
assets you don't mind selling to pay for your end of life care, it's best to
give to your heirs over the course of your life.

The downside is a substantial gift while the giver is alive has a paperwork
burden, as well as a loss in the step-up in cost basis you get when giving
after death. The upside is you get to see how your heirs use the gift and you
can express your feelings directly, rather than through rolling in your grave.

~~~
creaghpatr
Very interesting way of looking at it, almost a philosophical approach.

------
lossolo
People that do not benefit society at all, like celebrities that are known
from that they are known, can buy a diamond ring for 1.5+ mil dollars. And the
people awarded with highest, most prestigious award that human can receive for
pushing humankind further and further can't afford to pay for medical bills.
There is something really wrong with the world in which we live.

~~~
greeneggs
Perhaps I am missing something, but the Vox story says that he _could_ afford
to pay his medical bills. He sold some assets, and paid his bills. There are
much better arguments for universal health care than someone with almost $800K
in unneeded assets. Taxes should first subsidize health care for those who
can't afford it on their own.

