Did Alex Chilton Die For Lack of Health Insurance?

​It probably didn't help. "At least twice in the week before his fatal heart attack, Chilton experienced shortness of breath and chills while cutting grass. But he did not seek medical attention," reports the Times-Picayune, in an otherwise lovely and elegiac piece on the musician's life in New Orleans, "in part because he had no health insurance." In this sad fate, Chilton joins Vic Chesnutt, whose frustration over mounting medical bills he couldn't pay may have led him to overdose on prescription painkillers. It's been said before, but musicians and other artists are particularly vulnerable to the cruel vicissitudes of the insurance industry. May that lousy fact soon change.