If he worked at a legitimate job for 30 years as the article reports, then he paid a whole lot into Medicare and has every right to use it. I abhor the system, because most of the money taken in is spent on deadbeats who paid little or nothing into the system. But it doesn’t sound like this man fell into that category — more like he got overlooked and died, because the hospital was overwhelmed with hordes of deadbeats who it’s legally mandated to treat just like the non-deadbeats.
And that was the basis of my original question: was he one of the former or one of the latter. It appears that he was a non-deadbeat.