Why Pay For The Care Of The Careless
Monday, January 18, 2010 at 9:57PM I received this via email from a friend and checked it out via Snopes - it's totally legitimate.
Doctor Roger Starner Jones is a seventh generation Mississippian who specializes in emergency medicine at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, MS. He penned the following "letter to the editor" of Jackson's Clarion-Ledger newspaper on August 23, 2009.
Dear Sirs:
Dr. Starner JonesDuring my shift last night in the ER, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient with an expensive shiny gold tooth, multiple elaborate expensive tattoos, a very expensive brand of tennis shoes and a new cellular telephone equipped with her favorite R&B tune for a ringtone. Glancing over her chart, I could not help notice the payer status: Medicaid.
She smokes more than one costly pack of cigarettes every day and still has money to buy beer. And our Congress expects me to pay for this woman's health care?
Our nation's health care crisis is not a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. It is a crisis of culture.
A culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on vices while refusing to take care of one's self, or heaven forbid, purchase health insurance. A culture that thinks "I can do whatever I want to because someone else will always take care of me."
Life is really not that hard. Most of us reap what we sow.
Starner Jones, MD
Jackson, MS
Reader Comments (3)
This sums it up perfectly. Pathetically, but perfectly.
Isn't that just typical of America today? Some low-life with all of the essential toys on Medicaid. Democrats suck, and that was definitely a Democrat he was talking about.
Amen!! Suppose anyone in Washington is listening?