GraniteGrok: How poor is poor?

Starner Jones, MD is a seventh generation Mississippian and wanted to come back to Mississippi after going somewhere else for college and medical school. His extracurricular interests are golf, hunting, fishing and college football.

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Dear Sirs:

"During my last night's shift in the ER, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient with a shiny new gold tooth, multiple elaborate 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 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.

Don't you agree?

STARNER JONES, MD Jackson , MS

(H/T: Sue)

The below has been verified by Snopes - that said, note the snarky Letter that the Libs that run Snopes decided to run antagonistically against Dr. Jones's - once again, a push by Liberals to declare and maintain that everyone's needs are to be met by others financially? Is there no need to be self-responsible anymore? Dr. Jones correctly asks the question "why should I be held responsible for someone's basic needs (healthcare, in this instance) when they spend their money on other things OTHER than their basic needs?

I can corroborate some of these claims - when TMEW and I ran our daycare center (and I still worked full time as an IT Manager, I saw those on State aid walk through our doors with things that I certainly would never buy because of their cost. I heard the conversations of goings on and trips that I wondered "HOW are these folks affording these things??".

I join with Dr. Starner - the poor of the world should be so rich as our poor....

Comments

This is the kind of story that can shake heads, of course -- but it does nothing to bring light to the issue of health insurance reform. How do we know that cell phone is hers? How do we know that she didn't get her tattoos when she did have money? How do we know the tennis shoes weren't a gift, or bought at Goodwill? Fact is, we all will pay for her health care -- at the emergency room, if she doesn't. We'll pay it through medicaid, or through the shift of costs to the rest of us. THAT doesn't make sense. What is the alternative solution? To leave our ill on the streets? To refuse emergency room care if one cannot pay? The insurance companies are getting rich off of those who pay for coverage, but don't get it. While that might be good capitalism which some consider to be "the American way," it also doesn't make sense that we let insurance company CEOs and their stockholders take a big share of health care dollars right from the top. Their interest, as insurance company bureaucrats, is to keep from having to pay for the bills of their customers. They obviously do a mighty good job of that considering the big salaries and bonuses of the CEOs. Medicare-for-all, Teddy Kennedy's cause, wouldn't have taken a 2,000 page bill to create, and would have still allowed insurance companies to sell their wares -- just as they do as "supplemental" Medicare coverage. That's a win-win for all of us.

Posted by: Jim Splaine | November 30, 2009 9:28 AM

Hmmm...I was just contemplating that my hubby and I will pay for 5 years before health coverage kicks in for us (like everybody else)...well, actually me, since hubby is now covered under the VA after we both paid for private health insurance for years. We'll both be 65 when universal health insurance kicks in, but in fact may be dead by then. So, I'm not too thrilled about paying for five years for something I (and many seniors and others) may never actually use if we kick the bucket before then. Plus, hubby will pay, too, so actually he'll be paying for his "free" VA health coverage that he, along with many other veterans, supposedly earned due to his/their service. What's wrong with this picture, she asked? Jim, nice try at a legitimate argument, but it's simply well, a bit too defensive. Shaheen ruined the competition in health coverage in NH and the insurance companies fled. Plus, what is it that people don't like about people who make alot of money? Me thinks they're simply jealous, but the truth is that everyone has the same opportunity to go to college and work hard if they don't like what they make or their current job doesn't pay enough to suit them. Why are liberals so hell bent on punishing hard-working, successful people who make a ton of money? I thought that was the American dream; albeit, one that is quickly fading and discouraged!

Posted by: judy | November 30, 2009 11:20 AM

I don't disagree that people reap what they sow, and that there's a culture of choosing unhealthy lifestyles. But what's the solution? Obviously there's no scenario where we just let people die without treatment because they made a bad choice, or even a lot of them. The facts are that when people with no insurance show up in an ER, we're all paying for their health care already. Does Dr. Jones think it would have been more expensive for the taxpayers if his patient had some kind of health insurance and a degree of preventive care before showing up in his ER? Questionable logic at best. Even worse is the argument that the affluent are being unfairly targeted for the costs of health care reform. America's wealth is so highly concentrated in the hands of a tiny fraction of the populace that the propserous would barely notice the financial impact of health care reforms. I'm baffled by this apparent concern for the wealthy by many people who are suffering the most in our struggling economy.

Posted by: Gary | December 6, 2009 8:55 AM

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