Here’s a pretty remarkable story that was spotted over at Patrick.net the other day. In what is clearly a sign of the times for the U.S. economy, the health care system, and government spending, one ex-con is now about to be incarcerated again in order to get more convenient health care. The details are in this report at Signs on San Diego.

Robber says he did it to go back to prison

Peter Barry Lawrence pointed a BB gun at a bank teller and was surprised at the amount of bravado that surged through him. He threatened to shoot anyone who followed him out.

“I felt like Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson,” he said. “There was a sudden rush of adrenaline.”

Lawrence, 71, made his getaway in his wheelchair, with $2,000 in cash on his lap. He was headed back to his rented room at the nearby San Diego Downtown Lodge, but he took a meandering route down Seventh Avenue until the police caught up with him five minutes later.

And just like that, the rush was over. But that was all part of the plan.

The way Lawrence tells it, Monday’s robbery of a Chase Bank was just a desperate ploy to get back behind bars, where he believes he will receive better medical care than he has been able to obtain on his own.

On the outside, Lawrence subsisted on about $1,000 from the government in social security and other benefits while dealing with colon cancer, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, and a number of other ailments. This led him to the conclusion that life in prison was better than as a free man where it became too difficult to get around town to access free health care from Medicare and Medi-Cal … surely there’s a lesson in here about something.