There are a lot of “letters” from doctors going around discussing health care. To verify the accuracy of this one, we were directed to Snopes to confirm — and it looks to be legit, so we wanted to reprint for your reading pleasure:

Dear Sirs:

“During my last night’s shift 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 the chart, one could not help noticing her payer status: Medicaid. She smokes more than one costly pack of cigarettes every day and, somehow, still has money to buy beer.

And our Congress expects me to pay for this woman’s healthcare? Our nation’s healthcare 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. Don’t you agree?

STARNER JONES, MD
Jackson, MS

This is the kind of letter that makes me want to bust out my Online Bill Pay and immediately send an e-check to the Federal Government and pay into the socialized health care system.

Thanks Doc Jones, we appreciate you having the gonads to publish this.

Hat Tip to Nealz Nuze.