Soooo for the last couple days I have noticed this older lady outside the hospital with her IVs in her arm and her oxygen tube up her nose, SMOKING. Now why in the hell are we letting her have oxygen if she is allowed to sit out there and smoke, she should be offered an altimatum….ONE OR THE OTHER BITCH
—Seriously Pissed
This article appears in May 28 – Jun 3, 2009.
Agreed, and I’m a smoker.
Also agreed
Agreed.
Your tax money at work….
Yup, agreement here!
They should wrap the IV cable round her neck, strangle the old scrote then chuck her under a bus – and as a final taaa daa butt out the ciggy on her forehead – but seriously, what can we do, no doubt it’s her entitlement to be a butt smoking cancer hag who can piss away our tax dollars
Is it really safe to have open flames around oxygen?
Also, let the old bird have her smoke, she’s probably on her last leg anyway. I see the irony in the situation too, but it’s really not my business.
As long as she pays taxes too, she can access and exploit the health care system as much as she wants. For those complaining, try to imagine that YOUR tax dollars are being spent on saving sick babies. That should make you feel better.
Agreed. I mean she already has tubes running into her nose anyway, why use lung power to suck that smoke in? She should just patch some tubing into her oxygen line and connect the other end to a vaporizer! Tadaa! Instant headrush.
I had a friend that actually quit smoking because she had to be put on oxygen. She was a little concerned about blowing herself up, haha.
OP you can go fuck yourself. She’s more than paid for her fucking oxygen. I’m sure you have no vices or did anything stupid. Refuse to give a scuba diver medical help because they rose too fast and got the bends, afterall it was their own fault and any of the other 1,000s of other stupid things people do.
Agreed Bro Tim.
People who smoke are of greater benefit financially to the rest of us than non-smokers. They die earlier and consume less CPP, OAS, GIS and healthcare costs than the Puritans complaining and bitching on here.
It costs about $50,000 a year to keep a person in Long Term Care facility, and some of them live there for 10 years or more.
It’s not like an accountant shows up at your deathbed with a balance sheet to show the net benefit/cost to the taxpayer for you having been alive.
If he /she did provide a balance sheet who would pay the difference or get the checque ?
Are some of you serious? This is why as a smokers should pay more taxes. This also goes with anyone over weight. The people with gym memberships and lead a healthy life should be the ones that are offered a tax break. Tell the old woman to choose the cigarette or the oxygen tube. I’m tored of my tax dollars going towards lazy, fat, abusers.
Is this any different than the feeling we get watching the obese carry on stuffing their faces or their kids faces with Big Macs and DIET pop? I think it’s pretty normal to have such feelings… it has less to do with money and more to do with common, decent living or “social standards”.
Yeah we’re serious Beisan. Fat people and smokers pay taxes too. It’s THEIR healthcare system too. They have every right to eat what they want and smoke what they want and get treated for lung cancer and heart disease while they do it. Smokers do pay more taxes…on cigarettes.
umm beisan, I do believe smokers do pay more taxes.
Agreed kay. Revulsion is a normal feeling. We’re supposed to rise above it using empathy, but it’s more difficult with some than with others – when I see Fatty McFatson stuffing an entire ham between her jiggly jowls, I find it hard to feel anything but disgust, especially when I know that she spends much of her time resenting thin healthy people for not being in the same boat that she is, and rhyming off all the reason that she just CAN’T be responsible for her own walrus-sized ass.
Beisan, I smoke myself – fair disclosure. Anyway, as of 5 years ago about 70 percent of the price of tobacco was taxes. Taxes have gone nowhere but up since. CBC reported last year that in 1993 revenue from cigarette taxes came pretty close to covering direct health-care costs attributable to smoking. In other words, 15 years ago smokers were paying their own direct health care (hospital stays and treatment). The situation has not changed since.
A pack a day smoker, if buying cigarettes by the pack, will be giving the government about $6 a day, or about $2200 a year. If they start needing some help 30 years down the road they’ve already advanced the government $66 thousand dollars over and above what non-smokers pay, *and* they have paid their regular taxes as well, which of course includes a very sizeable chunk for healthcare.
Also, quite a few smokers never do become any more of a burden on the healthcare system than their non-smoking compatriots do. And finally, the way the stats are reported, there’s a bias towards blaming smoking for everything – walk into hospital with a respiratory problem caused primarily by your occupation, and if the powers that be find out that you’re a smoker, they’ll blame it all on smoking.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying smoking is good. I’m trying to quit myself. And I also find it ludicrous that someone on oxygen can get wheeled outdoors to have a puff. But before you think that smokers as a class are sponging the system, and nobody else is, do your homework.
You took the words right out of my mouth, Realist.
Ditto Realist. Here’s empirical demonstration that smoking actually reduces overall healthcare costs: http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/…
I quote: “If people stopped smoking, there would be a savings in health care costs, but only in the short term. Eventually, smoking cessation would lead to increased health care costs.”
I don’t smoke, and don’t encourage it. But the healthcare-oriented economic argument has never been a very strong one.
And in response to Beisan’s holier than thou ramblings: Healthnuts (myself included) often end up costing the system MORE than those who take up terminal vices like smoking. In addition to paying sizable excise taxes, smokers work their whole productive lives like the rest of us. They then politely die shortly after retirement, thereby saving society from supporting them for 35 years of rest, relaxation, and various old age related health care issues.
Eventually most of us will cost the health care system mucho dinero. Some of us just have the decency to do it earlier than others.
wow, Initially I was thinking the same thing as op… but then the other side made a compelling argument.
Now, I think she can do whatever the hell she wants but she looks pretty stupid doing it.
she’s essentially putting a flame thrower down her throat.
Completely aside from how we feel smokers should be treated when it comes to health care, they shouldn’t be given oxygen tanks if they’re gonna smoke around them simply because it makes them a danger to anyone who may be in the vicinity if that tank does blow up. Who do you think they’d be blaming if that happened? The doctors who sent them out with it. If they want to smoke, they should have to do it away from their oxygen tanks. If smoking is more important to them than oxygen, so be it.
PSP, if that’s the case alcoholics shouldn’t be allowed near any kind of spark anywhere either, hehe
EXACTLY Realist. Not to mention that stupid commercial that came out at one point in time. Some girl comes on: “I never smoked a day in my life, but I have lung cancer from second hand smoke”. Stealing what Kay said on another post *Major eye roll*
I posted this because im NOT against her having the oxygen for whatever reason she has it. What I am pissed about is that she is getting the oxygen and DIDN”T have to quit smoking to get it. So the next time some obese person has gastric bypass surgery then goes back to their old habbits we are going to help them again?? NO you have to earn the right to that surgery, and lose weight before you get it, SHOW SOME INITIATIVE………So why doesnt she have to do this?
Frenchie, the only things you control in this world are YOUR thoughts, YOUR feelings and YOUR actions. That’s why.
Raaaaaaa that doesnt make me less pissed at the old goat!!!
Smoking while using oxygen is pretty dangerous. For her own safety as well as the safety of others in the area you should alert the hospital staff the next time you see her out there.
Actually there were 2 staff members out there today in their crocks and scrubs smoking right along with her ……..
Maybe if this women hadn’t been sucking on cancer sticks in the past she wouldn’t hooked up to oxygen now.
I know lots of people who didn’t smoke, yet can’t get adequate health care because people like this old bag are clogging up the system.
I might sound like a cold bitch here, but I think illnesses that are caused by lifestyle shouldn’t be covered under MSI. That’s like killing yourself and expecting your life insurance policy to still make a pay out to your beneficiaries. Or burning your own house down and expecting an insurance pay out.
Flame away, bitches.
An older lady you say…Why would anyone bitch about how she uses some of her paid in tax dollars ? Plus if she’s still smoking, she’s really putting some tax dollars into the ole Government tax account ‘eh. Let’s hope she drives a gas guzzler…there’s some premo tax dollars being put into the Government coffers from that tax scam !
Jammie, I love you. I’m going to go ahead and repost your comment. It summarizes my feelings toward obesity to a tee. A little tangential, yes, but still.
“Revulsion is a normal feeling. We’re supposed to rise above it using empathy, but it’s more difficult with some than with others – when I see Fatty McFatson stuffing an entire ham between her jiggly jowls, I find it hard to feel anything but disgust, especially when I know that she spends much of her time resenting thin healthy people for not being in the same boat that she is, and rhyming off all the reason that she just CAN’T be responsible for her own walrus-sized ass.”
C’mon people use some sense. When was the last time, if ever, you heard of any patient anywhere blow themselves up having a smoke while on oxygen? I haven’t. I daresay there are tens of thousands in the world on any given day doing it. It’s like people believing if you shoot at a car’s gas tank it going to blow up. An urban legend.
I work at the hospital and have seen a few people on oxygen smoking. You would think their nurses would say something to them She might have to stuff the smoke in the tank to blow it up. And the staff members in scrubs and crocs are not always nurses or doctors. They are usually support staff like SPD, clerks or housekeeping.
“I think illnesses that are caused by lifestyle shouldn’t be covered under MSI” – PK
Ahh, lifestyle legislation. That sounds like fun! How exactly would we enforce this? The Cheeseburger Gestapo? The Secret Smoking Police?
I’ll pass on the fascism, thanks 🙂
Bro, it’s unlikely the O2 tank would explode, but if you remember grade school and the Fire Triangle you need Heat (cigarette), fuel (clothing) and….Oxygen (from the O2 tank). Together this equals increased risk of some person lighting themselves on fire. It happens, maybe not often, but it happens. Just another way smoking can kill you.
Also PK…are you SURE you are doing everything you can to control you diabetes? Because if you aren’t…I may not want the complication you suffer because of it covered by MSI either.
Oh, now your ‘lifestyle’ may cause an illness and then you are on your own. I presume all the people who engaged in unsafe sex practices will now be stuck with a massive bill for Aids treatment. And skiers and snowboarders will get a bill for rescue and treatment, skateboarders will be billed for damages to limbs, spine arms, etc.
People who collapse at a marathon run will be required to carry an Amex card, Don’t leave home without it.
The oxygen tank cannot explode because she is not in a confined space but out in the open where the wind makes the mixture such as to be not ignitable; basic chemistry.
Maybe she never had kids so her taxes for education just went to pay for other kids.
Leave her alone, it looks disgusting but she is happy.
basic chemistry… oxygen is one of the most volatile, explosive substances on the planet.
Oxygen is second in volatility and explosiveness only to my colon after burrito night.
Well, Miles, my last A1c level would indicate that yes, I am 😛
I never said legislation such as not covering illnesses due to lifestyle was feasible or possible, but in theory I think it makes sense.
Also: as per the fat person comment — some fat people ACTUALLY do have real reasons beyond their control as to why they’re overweight or obese: medications, and certain conditions can cause weight gain and make it virtually impossible to lose weight. For instance, I have a condition that requires medication to lose weight or keep at a healthy weight. It’s not an actual weight loss drug, but it’s a drug that corrects a metabolic disorder. And it took over 8 years to get the appropriate diagnosis so it’s hard to GET diagnoses so there are probably others out there who have metabolic disorders who aren’t being diagnosed. So, in effect, there *are* people out there who are overweight due to things beyond their control. The majority of people DO probably eat themselves fat, but there are a few people out there who are fat for a reason.
sorry.. if it ain’t goin’ in the pie hole, it ain’t gettin’ stored. I have a lot of sympathy for the obese, as much I do for the drug addicted, because they’re one in the same… and I’d tell the addict the same thing… if you don’t score you’ll eventually shed the problem. Obviously, in either case, one should manage their “abused substance of choice” under the care of their physician (covering my ass here because I will give change to the alcoholic knowing they’ll drink with it, knowing they might seize and die if they don’t)
All this because some ill elderly lady was having a smoke?!? You people need to take a deep breath, free to be baby, I can only hope that my last day on earth ends in some huge explosion taking my oxygen tank and half a hospital with me. What a barn burner!!! I can’t believe I read all these comments… I really have too much time on my hands…
This sounds like a case for MYTH BUSTERS ha.
If this pisses you off then you should have seen the dumbass that use to come into where I worked a while back. She would have a newborn baby in a snuggly on her chest. Baby’s face in mommy’s face. Baby totally underweight and hooked up to a freakin oxygen tank. This dumbass would then proceed to come in, buy a pack of smokes, walk out of the store and light up while still carrying the baby in this manner. I couldn’t serve her. I try not to judge, but buddy I was judging this bitch.
Again, when have you heard of any patient getting burned then (if you’re not keen into explosions). Never or there would be news items ad nauseam describing the thousands getting burned or whatever.
Mythbusters have already shot at gasoline tanks and propane tanks and nothing happened til they rigged things tomake the big booms.
Kay, you’re an idiot.
Before I was diagnosed I would eat 1200 cals/day and STILL gain weight — about a pound or two per week. One week I gained 4 pounds, again on a 1200 calorie/day diet. Since I’ve been on medication for the disorder I’ve lost 20lbs by eating about 1800-2000 cals/day, so stuff THAT in YOUR pie hole, or better yet, suck it.
kay you’re like peggy hill with perma-rag.
As I said, it doesn’t happen that often, but smoking near a source of oxygen increases your risk of starting a fire. I doubt the numbers would be in the thousands, but it doesn’t take many people lighting themselves and their surrounding on fire for you to have to realize that smoking around an oxygen enriched environment is not a good idea.
Here’s a couple of links that pop up if you google “smoking oxygen tank fire”.
page 5 of this: http://www.nfpa.org/assets/files//PDF/Smok…
and a news piece:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7QpSfvyOek…
Oh my…oh my god…oh god…
Owned.
I’ll leave the pie hole stuffing to you and your fucked up math, Kitty.
Just wondering. Can overwieght people starve to death?
That was a really retarded question, #@%*
The rule of 3’s apply here…. 3 minutes without oxygen, you die. Three days without water, you die. 3 weeks without food, you die.
But I think the obese would suffer a cardiac event long before they died of starvation. Fat hearts can be unpredictable but nobody ever died of starvation because they didn’t stuff their pie hole for a day.
Holy shit kay…that was really uncalled for, even for you.
I couldn’t get through all these posts but HOLY SHIT! I cannot believe most of you people. “Hey let’s not help someone who is sick and in need of health care because they smoke.” SMOKING IS LEGAL!!!! What the hell is wrong with you people.
I think “Realist in Dartmouth” way above made the most sense on this bitch.
Smoke’m if you got’m. It’s your choice!
Be fat if you wanna be. That’s your choice too.
Heaven forbit if your fat and you smoke. You may as well just give up now. Throw your hands up and just give up.
You people need to get a grip. Really.
Hey, kay, exception: David Blaine. The guy’s an animal. And did you really just say that fat people have fat HEARTS?! Christs sake woman, get a grip.
then kay must have a shit heart!
Actually there is a documentary called Why are Thin People Not Fat, and it includes a study where they gave an obese person only vitamins and water for a year and they survived fine.
I’ll believe that when I see it.
Oh and eastcoastgal, there’s a whole cascade of things wrong with your above points…but I’m too fucking tired to tackle that now. Maybe tomorrow.
I know, Angel, truth hurts. Is there really ever a time where bullshit is more appropriate than truth? Maybe in the life of an ostrich and maybe in your life but not in mine.
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then kay must have a shit heart!
Posted by Nice Goin’ Fat on June 4, 2009 at 2:53 PM
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Personal Attack #16. Still targetting Kay. In another thread. Disturbing stalking-type behaviour. A liability to the Coast. Certainly not an asset. Does this guy think he is funny? That would be a grave mistake.
I’d be calling my lawyer by now if I were him. (Not that I’ll do anything… just drawing attention to it…)