Jobless North Carolina Man Couldn't Afford to Visit a Doctor So He Robbed Bank for $1

A jobless North Carolina man couldn't afford to visit a doctor, so he robbed a bank for $1 to receive free healthcare in prison.

His name was James Verone. On June 9, 2011, the 59-year-old walked into an RBC bank branch in Gastonia, North Carolina, a small city west of Charlotte, and handed the teller a note demanding a single dollar. He asked for medical attention in the same note. Then he sat down in a chair in the lobby and waited calmly for police to arrive. He did not run and he did not resist.

Verone had worked for 17 years as a Coca-Cola delivery driver. After losing that job, he spent three years trying to find steady work and took part-time jobs that came with no benefits. He had no health insurance. He was living with back problems, a problem with his foot and a growth on his chest that no doctor had ever examined. He was also too young for Medicare, which begins at 65, and without a job he had no way to buy coverage he could afford.

Before the robbery, he mailed a letter to the Gaston Gazette. "This robbery is being committed by me for one dollar," he wrote. He wanted people to understand that the motive was medical, not money, and that he was not a career criminal. In a jailhouse interview afterward, he said he had no other direction to go.

His plan did not go the way he hoped. He wanted a three-year sentence, long enough to get surgery on his back and his foot and have the growth diagnosed and treated. Prosecutors charged him with larceny from a person instead of bank robbery, a lesser offense that was unlikely to keep him locked up for more than a year. In 2012 he struck a deal, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor larceny, and was released on time served.

His case came up in the middle of the national fight over healthcare costs, one year after the Affordable Care Act was signed and before most of its coverage rules had taken effect. It has resurfaced online many times since.

Readers on every side point to it for their own reasons. Some see a story about the price of medical care. Others see a story about how hard it is to find work after 50, or about the dignity of a man who spent his life working and still ended up with nowhere to turn. Many simply note that he chose a jail cell over going without care, and that the jail had to treat him. The Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that jails and prisons must provide inmates with adequate medical care.

The story is more than a decade old, but the questions it raises about work, health and cost have not gone away.

Should anyone in America have to commit a crime to see a doctor? YES OR NO?