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.
Comments…..I work in the medical field and see similar situations all the time. The patient has enough money to by smokes , beer and street drugs, but not their prescription drugs. They will often stop taking prescription drugs and show up at the hospital in two weeks or two months – twice as sick and medicaid has to pay for this.  The staff often refers to Medicaid as the “Gold Card”
My wife is an OB. She trained in a city that has a pop. of about 250k – not affluent but not third world. It was a few years ago, when the economy was better. Point being… not much excuse for subzero humans – but there were tons. Never saw a dad of a medicaid recipient when the pregnant mother was around. The mothers were on crack – usually in the ER to request more pills for ‘pain’. Some doctors – her peers – would work hard to tie the tubes of habitual drug using-baby makers when they were on the table just to stop the destruction of human life – and the endless cycle.  My wife, a Christian, began tolerating abortion facing the fact that the baby was destroyed before it would ever breathe air… My friend, your taxes paid for this health care… and the programs in place created this culture… vote Him out in 12 – though I have no idea who to vote in!
Comments…..I am not a doctor but have been behind the same tatted up smoke blowin beer sops in grocery stores and when they pay up there it is with tax payer money there too, in the form of food stamp credit cards.