... dude works for 20 years at minimum wage, and then when he gets sick with a non-acute ailment expects everyone to drop their shit and make his life better as a free ride -- and that's an example of "good planning done in by external forces"?

He worked in some ambiguous field for 20 years until he lost his job in the economic collapse, then he started working minimum wage, and with the insurance available to him on that job he was unable to afford treatment for cancer. Cancer is among the more acute ailments one might reasonably expect ever to face; if a tumor is malignant, that is, cancerous, then if untreated, it is unusual for it to be nonfatal.

If you start completely mischaracterizing data that is held up as a counterexample to your position, it's a good sign that you're being controlled by your preconceptions.