
Help Us Help Molly Holzschlag - cheeaun
http://www.gofundme.com/HelpUsHelpMolly
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rtb
(As a brit) I don't understand this:

"Molly was employed at the small NPO Knowbility as the Open Web Evangelist.
Knowbility was able to put her on Family and Medical Leave which allowed Molly
to retain her health insurance coverage. The FMLA time period has ended and
the only coverage available now is through COBRA."

So she had health insurance, but now that she's ill and has to stop work, it
is stopping? If health insurance doesn't help you when you are sick, when does
it help you?

Thank god (and the Labour party) for the NHS.

~~~
DanBC
[http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/jun2009/...](http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/jun2009/db2009064_666715.htm)

> Medical problems caused 62% of all personal bankruptcies filed in the U.S.
> in 2007, according to a study by Harvard researchers. And in a finding that
> surprised even the researchers, 78% of those filers had medical insurance at
> the start of their illness, including 60.3% who had private coverage, not
> Medicare or Medicaid.

EDIT: Insurance is a scam and insurers are evil.

~~~
oijaf888
How is insurance a scam? You are lowering the impact an extreme event has on
you in return for the payment of monthly amount.

~~~
moocowduckquack
_How is insurance a scam?_

Insurance is a bet and for an insurer to make money you have to bet that your
luck is going to be considerably worse than the average.

People should just get together in large groups and pool their money, it would
be much cheaper.

~~~
oijaf888
Isn't that why most insurance companies used to be mutual co-ops and only
recently have become corporations? Essentially there are insurance companies
that are exactly what you describe, people in a large group pooling their
money.

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ck2
Best wishes to Molly for a speedy recovery and to feel better soon.

Thank goodness she is famous, even if lesser known by the mainstream and
friends can appeal to help her.

For those that think the ACA (obamacare) will solve this after January, nope.

A full half of the states [1] have denied medicaid expansion (because the
supreme court ruled they could turn it down) which means if you fall into the
gap where you "make too much money" ($12k - $16k) you cannot get health
insurance.

So if you got ill but were trying to work part time to stay in your home/pay
rent, you will probably make too much to get health insurance!

[1]
[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/10/02/us/uninsured-a...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/10/02/us/uninsured-
americans-map.html?ref=health&_r=0)

This is probably going to cause "healthcare migration" where people who get
ill have to move to get assistance if they have some income but not enough.

~~~
oijaf888
If you make less than (I believe its) 4x federal level of poverty in your area
you are eligible for subsidies on your health insurance via the marketplace.
The issue you are pointing out is where you make too much to qualify for your
state's medicare plan but not enough to be able to pay for private insurance
even with subsidies.

So its not that you make "too much" to get health insurance, but you make too
much to get free health insurance but too little to live off of and pay for
private health insurance.

~~~
drivingmissm
"subsidies" is the new fancy term for "welfare" or "handouts". That's what it
is, and there's no such thing as "free health insurance" only taxpayer-
provided health insurance.

~~~
potatolicious
Pure pedantry. Nobody is under the illusion that doctors and nurses work for
free. When people say "free" they mean "free for the user at the point of
service", which is a bit of a mouthful.

Exactly zero people believe that the health care doesn't have to be paid for
by someone at some point. This is a straw man.

Also, "tax breaks" is the fancy term for "welfare" or "handouts". See, I can
do meaningless feel-good rhetoric! Let's debate these issues at their core,
not resort to meaningless weasel words.

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blahpro
Molly's books were what really got me started with web development. She was
kind enough to send me a signed copy of one of her books when I was probably
~13 years old after emailing her. About ten years later, I was able to meet up
with her here in the UK for a coffee, which was lovely.

If you can, please support Molly's treatment with a donation. Thank you.

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nekopa
I want to help, but all I have is time and skills. So if anyone here needs
some English language proof reading done (I do have some tech skills but they
are very rusty) contact me, I will do the work, and you can donate something
to this cause.

Email is in my profile, and I'm the head teacher for a language school so my
skills are good. My problem is I have two small babies and I live in a low
income country so even $10 is tough for me to give right now, but I'm a
worker, and I will pull an all nighter to do this.

Honor code, I trust you to donate, send proof if you can, but either way I
hope I can do something to help. I don't care how much (I know people who need
English proof reading are probably coming from low income countries too) but
anything would be good.

Lee

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cheeaun
For those wondering if this is legit, Molly herself has confirmed it on
Twitter
[https://twitter.com/mollydotcom/status/398090908496691200](https://twitter.com/mollydotcom/status/398090908496691200)

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FlyingAvatar
If you live in the US, this should serve as a warning that you need Long Term
Disability insurance. If your employer doesn't offer it, get it yourself.
Healthcare is still broken and ObamaCare doesn't fix this situation.

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zdw
Having met Molly at a CSS WG meeting last year, she's an amazingly
enthusiastic (maybe too enthusiastic) contributor to the W3C.

The fairy godmother comment is pretty spot on - she's plays the part of the
consensus builder and conscience to various disparate technical parties.

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baudehlo
My one story about Molly - I met her as a speaker at an XML Conference around
1999 or 2000. She was extremely welcoming and kind to me, a wet behind the
ears nobody at the time. We went for a speakers' pre-conference dinner that
night, and it was decided we would have Sushi.

As a Northern Brit I had never seen nor eaten sushi before, never mind looked
at the menu. I asked if she minded ordering for me, and she graciously did so.

As my first time eating sushi I assumed the small amount of guacamole provided
would be topped up once I finished it, so I happily spread the top of a piece
of sushi with half of my "guacamole". Never have I wanted to scream so much in
my life. Molly just kindly passed me some extra water and made sure I was OK.

I never really kept up with her, but she'll always be there sat next to me
when I had my first ever wasabi experience.

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diydsp
Just out of curiosity, is this the kind of thing the Affordable Care Act would
be expected to help?

~~~
lftl
Not in any huge way that I see.

She was on employer provided insurance, which won't undergo any huge changes
that would change her situation. After the FMLA time period (where her
employer could keep her on their insurance without her paying extra), she's
now on COBRA which is basically an additional period where you can pay the
full cost of your employer's plan to the insurance company directly, and
extend your coverage by 18-36 months.

The only difference under the ACA is that if she became unemployed during the
annual open enrollment window, then she would be able to immediately jump to
individual insurance rather than using COBRA. Depending on her income level,
she might be eligible for a subsidy if she made the change. So depending on
income, her state's insurance market, and when she gets sick she might be able
to get insurance for less than $1000/mo she's paying in COBRA premiums.

~~~
anactualmd
My understanding is that Cobra becomes available after termination. Therefore,
she's already unemployed.

~~~
free652
Kinda. My GF can get a cobra during an unpaid leave.

So my GF is expecting a baby in December, so for the 6 months she has
discounted healthcare and then if she doesn't come back. She gets unpaid leave
and Cobra.

Technically she wont be terminated, but she will have Cobra.

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PeterisP
What happens to people in USA with similar situation (employer-provided
insurance ends, life sustaining healthcare is needed, no income to pay for
that) who don't get a successful fundraiser?

Bankruptcy due to unpaid medical bills? Withheld treatment because of non-
payment, possibly causing death? Both of these?

No offense, I'm simply curious on how the system works.

~~~
VLM
Life sustaining you'll get for free by the hospital which merely raises
everyone elses rates. We already have socialized medicine, its just the
"wrong" middlemen are profiteering.

From personal experience via a friend with a broken arm, the hospital will
eventually present you with the most amazing collection of bills you've ever
seen with the most unimaginable rates, so a simple non-compound arm fracture
and cast will end up billed as $50K. The goal of the hospital is to book as
large of a paper loss as possible, so the paper loss will probably exceed
actual service cost by a couple orders of magnitude. Somehow the ER doc who
spent about 15 minutes verifying yes it is indeed broken will charge 6 hours
of dedicated time, you'll be billed for entire jars of painkillers if they
give you a single pill, etc. It'll take about six months for all the bills to
arrive from all the doctors and the hospital, but bill collectors will start
calling before the first bill arrives. Once you're sure you have all the
bills, its bankruptcy time, which costs some time and money. So the real cost
of any lifesaving medical procedure never exceeds maybe $2K to a lawyer, maybe
less. She needed the car insurance money from the accident to get the car to
continue to attend school and work, don't recall how she paid for the
bankrupcty. Bankruptcy is actually pretty expensive and not surprisingly the
sharks in the biz only take cash. The bankruptcy doesn't really matter,
because part time no benefits minimum wage retail cashiers are not going to
get mortgages and new car loans anyway. Legally officially it could be an
issue for 7 years or whatever, in practice its not an issue after a couple
years at most. I suppose if you had the misfortune to break your arm the week
before graduation and you get a real job, you'd be out a substantial amount of
money. It would be highly unwise to get married if you're poor, because if she
was my wife at the time, I'd have had my financial life destroyed by her mere
car accident and broken arm. At least that's how it was in the early 90s.
Other than prices probably going up an order of magnitude or so, I suspect
nothing has really changed.

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songzme
If you'd like to find out more about Molly, she has a blog. I enjoyed her
Desktop Browser song: [http://www.molly.com/](http://www.molly.com/)

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throwmeaway2525
Wow, very generous donations coming in. It's really nice to see.

