Saturday, July 22, 2017

[Updated] RIP Joseph Rago

Joseph Rago, a Pulitzer-Prize winning editorial writer at The Wall Street Journal, was found dead Thursday evening in his apartment on St. Mark's Place. He was 34.

According to The Wall Street Journal:

The New York Police Department found Mr. Rago dead in his apartment at 7:40 p.m., according to a police official. The authorities went to check on Mr. Rago after he didn’t show up for work on Thursday. Paul Gigot, the editor of the Journal’s editorial page, had alerted the paper’s security officials, who then contacted the police.

Mr. Rago was found with no obvious signs of trauma and emergency responders declared him dead at the scene, the police said. The cause of death was being determined by the medical examiner on Friday.

Here's more via the Journal:

He did his homework, becoming one of the most well-sourced people around on health care, with sources throughout Washington and among academics on the left and right, Mr. Gigot said in an interview on Friday.

“He was the kind of person you liked to have a beer with — I know that’s a cliché, but it’s actually true,” Mr. Gigot said.

Rago started at the paper as an intern in 2005 after graduating from Dartmouth that year.


Updated 9/12

Reported by Patch today:

"The cause of death is sarcoidosis involving lungs, heart, spleen, hilar and mediastinal lymph nodes," Julie Bolcer, director of communications for the Medical Examiner, said in an email. "The manner of death is natural."

Sarcoidosis, which causes severe inflammation of the organs, is still relatively mysterious to doctors.

According to the Foundation for Sarcoidosis Research: "Despite the best efforts of researchers for more than a century working to better understand the complexities of this disease, sarcoidosis remains difficult to diagnose with limited therapies. Many patients suffer for years before arriving at the correct diagnosis or discovering the best treatment plan."

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

So young, handsome and smart. I wonder what happened?


RIP Young man....

Anonymous said...

He lived at 10 St. Marks Place. His editorials on Obamacare a k a ocommiescare were first rate.

Giovanni said...

A Very Mysterious death. There's already a 90 minute YouTube video about it with all kinds of crazy conspiracy theories. He was just as likely to be killed by a Chipotle burrito or from bootleg alcohol poisoning as from Monsanto or Russia. My guess is Chipotle.

Anonymous said...

Aside from respect and sympathy for all loved ones....

On a totally different note, this was a writer who wrote against O-Care in many instances and he lived on St. Marks? I guess that is what the world is coming to... Republicans living on St. Mark's and young ones at that against health insurance that provides a lifeline for millions.

sophocles said...

I took his death as an opportunity to listen to a talk on healthcare he gave at Hillsdale College in 2011. He appeared to be a thoughtful guy. But once you begin with the dogma that government is anti-liberty and central planning should give way to free markets, you're constricted to hate Obamacare and single payer even more. But I still don't understand how free markets are supposed to lower healthcare costs. For one thing, and I haven't heard much conservative discussion of this, markets will NEVER be free on the supply side. Doctors will always need degrees, and degrees will be expensive and limited. Beyond this, a free market presumes that people have money to spend in the market. And there's the hitch. If you don't have money to buy a car, you can borrow the money or live without the car. But if you can't afford live-saving surgery, what are you to do? Conservatives seem to have trouble understanding that people don't want to die in the streets for their free markets, any more than they want to call the police and be told, sorry, we don't accept that insurance, can you pay cash...

Anonymous said...

Ocommiescare?

What makes Obamacare "communism", moron?

Do you have a better plan? No, repeal isn't enough. Replacement with something worse isn't viable.

The ONLY healthcare better than the ACA is single-payer - deal with it.

Anonymous said...

Chipotle has ties to Russia.

And Obamacare isn't health care -- insurance (that you're forced at gun point to buy) is not health care. Justice Roberts called it a tax and he's right. That's why the fucking IRS collects it. But it is NOT health care, so stop calling it that.

I do have a better plan. Take care of yourself. That's health care. Stop eating shit and exercise. The editor at the Lancet recently said that over 50% of established medical science is BS. Stop handing over your responsibilities to priests in white coats who profit off keeping you sick. Stop drinking. Stop smoking. If it comes in plastic, don't eat it. Eat your vegetables. If your grandparents didn't eat it, you don't eat it. There's your health care, tubby.

Anonymous said...

@3:20 - gee, why didn't I think of doing any of those things before getting cancer? Totally my fault! Typical moron response to suggest anyone with any serious health issue must be fat. Good luck growing old.

Anonymous said...

Said the 400 pound guy sitting on his couch.