Ebola Patient Needs $500,000 to Cover Medical Bills

Fiscal Times ^ | 15 hrs ago | Beth Braverman

[CorporateStepsister]

The 33-year-old freelance cameraman who contracted Ebola in Liberia is fighting for his life at the University of Nebraska Medical Center this week. He’s also racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills.

According to a GoFundMe campaign launched Monday by his friends, Ashoka Mukpo’s medical bills could run in excess of $500,000.

[CorporateStepsister]

Here's hoping he can reach the goal.

[dennisw]

It pays to be a Liberian scammer...Then you don’t have to pay. In fact you sue

[willywill]

so if this guy survives, how many millions will a jury award duncans family because the dallas hospital was bigoted.

[lee martell]

This is a disease that bleeds out both the body and the billfold. Of course, most end stage diseases are costly to deal with, even influenza, which kills over 30 thousand people a year from what I’ve read.

[luvbach1]

What kind of name is Ashoka Mukpo? Just wondered.

[goldstategop]

If he dies, I doubt the hospital can collect on the tab.

He won’t have to worry about the debt since death voids all debts - $500,000 is nothing when one is on death row.

[lee martell]

The hospital may still try to collect om monies owed post mortem. They will either try getting it from his estate and possible trust fund, since his mom is known as ‘a British Aristocrat” as though that were a job description. or the hospitals may go directly to the parents, who are likely to be property owners of some means.

[RegulatorCountry]

He's white, his mother is a British society gal and he was adopted by her second husband, who was some variety of eastern religious, Buddhist or something. So that's where the surname comes from. As for “Ashoka,” I don't know. Sounds American Indian to me.

[goldstategop]

Not likely. You’re not liable for someone else’s debts.

After my father passed away, I had to get the hospital’s billing department to stop sending me bills for treatment he received while he was alive. I managed to get his account closed.

We are all responsible for paying our own debts but they don’t pass to one’s heirs.

[Fred Nerks]

http://shambhalatimes.org/2011/01/22/30-years-ago-at-lake-louise/

30 Years Ago at Lake Louise

[Flash Bazbeaux]

Ashoka Maurya (Sanskrit: अशोक मौर्य), (304–232 BCE), commonly known as Ashoka and also as Ashoka the Great, was an Indian emperor of the Maurya Dynasty who ruled almost all of the Indian subcontinent from circa 269 BCE to 232 BCE.[1] Ashoka converted gradually to Buddhism beginning about 263 BCE.[2] He was later dedicated to the propagation of Buddhism across Asia, and established monuments marking several significant sites in the life of Gautama Buddha. "Ashoka regarded Buddhism as a doctrine that could serve as a cultural foundation for political unity."[5

[Fred Nerks]

I don’t think this has anything to do with money:

The family of Ashoka Mukpo, the NBC News freelancer who contracted the Ebola virus in Liberia, is praising the doctor who survived the deadly disease and gave his blood to help the camera operator recover.

“I said my son can’t thank you enough,” Dr. Mitchell Levy, Mukpo’s father, recalled after speaking with the donor, Dr. Kent Brantly, Thursday evening.

“Whether it makes the difference or not, you never know,” Levy said. “But it makes a difference just to know there are people like that in this world.”

Brantly didn’t hesitate when he was asked to donate blood to help Mukpo, taking a detour from a family road trip to make the donation in Kansas City Tuesday. Brantly, who was the first American flown back to the U.S. from Africa after contracting Ebola, also gave blood that helped in the recovery of another stricken American, Dr. Rick Sacra.

Levy and Mukpo’s mother, Diana Mukpo, were struck by Brantly’s humble response to their thanks.

“He said, ‘I just stopped somewhere on the side of the road and gave blood,’” Levy recounted. “For him it wasn’t heroic, it was just ordinary, what you should do.”

The two families hope to have a reunion some day in the future — to celebrate both patients’ recoveries. Doctors at The Nebraska Medical Center, where Ashoka Mukpo is being treated, have said that they’re hopeful the blood transfusion will help him turn a corner.

IN-DEPTH
•We’re Trying to Jump Start His Immune System’: Mukpo Doctor
•Ebola Survivor Donates Blood to Ashoka Mukpo
•NBC Freelancer Ashoka Mukpo Receiving Treatment in Nebraska

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola-virus-outbreak/ashoka-mukpos-parents-praise-brantlys-blood-gift-n222636

[KitJ]

Let me get this straight. The ‘immigrant’ from Africa doesn’t owe anything (probably on account of our ‘free medical care’), and his family is suing the medical system. The white son of hippies is trying to crowd source his half million dollar medical bills.

Unleash the lawyers. I mean, ‘dogs’....

[Flash Bazbeaux]

“Asok” or “Asoke” is the same name. There’s a major street in Bangkok, Thailand called “Soi Asoke”.

Asok is an Indian intern in the Dilbert comic strip.[1][2] His first appearance was March 18, 1996.[3] He is a brilliant graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology.[4][5]

The character is named after a friend and co-worker of strip creator Scott Adams at Pacific Bell.[6] “Asok” is a common Indian name, though it is usually spelled “Ashok” and pronounced “Ah-shok”.

The name is an English variation of the name of the first major emperor of India, Emperor Ashoka.

[Smokin' Joe]

Ping...

A link to this thread has been posted on the Ebola Surveillance Thread

[Patriot Babe]

Why can’t NBC pay his medical bill since they are the one who sent him over there.

[4rcane]

to be honest, these bills are insane, skyway robbery. Theres no market forces or competition to bring down the price

[Fred Nerks]

Ashoka Mukpo: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

Ashoka Mukpo (center) with his mother, Diana (third from left) and birth father Mitchell Levy (far right) during a visit to Tibet in 2002. (Konchok.org)

The Daily Mail reports that Mukpo’s mother, Diana Mukpo, formerly Lady Diana Pybus of North Umberland, England, married Tibetan Buddhist lama Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche when she was 16 years old. The scandalous union of Trungpa, a 30-year-old revered monk who had taught David Bowie to meditate, and Diana, teenage daughter of a wealthy barrister, was headline news.

Diana’s book, titled Dragon Thunder, chronicles her life with the religious figure. From the description:

At the age of sixteen, Diana Mukpo left school and broke with her upper-class English family to marry Chögyam Trungpa, a young Tibetan lama who would go on to become a major figure in the transmission of Buddhism to the West. In a memoir that is at turns magical, troubling, humorous, and totally out of the ordinary, Diana takes us into her intimate life with one of the most influential and dynamic Buddhist teachers of our time.

Ashoka Mukpo’s biological father, Mitchell Levy, was the personal doctor to Trungpa, who suffered from chronic health issues. Diana had an affair with Levy while married to Trungpa and gave birth to Ashoka in 1981. Trungpa adopted Ashoka as his own and deemed the boy a tulku, the reincarnation of a Buddhist master teacher.

[Berlin_Freeper]

A perfect storm of Obola.

[Gene Eric]

Fund it with the cure-all, Obamcare.