Time to Shrug

Got this in an email from my friend Mike.

It is correctly attributed, and in my opinion, dead on.

During my shift in the Emergency Room last night, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient whose smile revealed an expensive shiny gold tooth, whose body was adorned with a wide assortment of elaborate and costly tattoos, who wore a very expensive brand of tennis shoes and who chatted on a new cellular telephone equipped with a popular R&B ring tone.

While glancing over her patient chart, I happened to notice that During my examination of her, the patient informed me that she smokes more than one costly pack of cigarettes every day and somehow still has money to buy pretzels and beer.

And, you and our Congress expect me to pay for this woman’s health care?  I contend that our nation’s “health care crisis” is not the result of a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. Rather, it is the result of a “crisis of culture,” a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on luxuries and vices while refusing to take care of one’s self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance. It is a culture based in the irresponsible credo that “I can do whatever I want to because someone else will always take care of me.”  

Once you fix this  ”culture crisis” that rewards irresponsibility and dependency, you’ll be amazed at how quickly our nation’s health care difficulties will disappear.

According to Snopes, the Mississippi Ledger Clarion ran the letter in its entirety, but it’s the follow up that interests me.

It comes from a Jennifer Sigrest who was appalled at Dr. Jones’ letter.  Incensed, I tell ya!

I’ve been stewing about an Aug. 23 letter to the editor (“Why pay for the care of the careless?”) in which Dr. Starner Jones questioned the worth of a patient to receive Medicaid because of her gold tooth,tattoos, R&B;ring tone on a new cell phone, cigarette-smoking and beer-drinking.

This kind of personal attack is nothing new with the hateful rhetoric of late. But it’s a real slippery slope when one questions whether another human merits support for health care because of appearances and choices. There are a lot of folks in this state who make less-than-perfect choices about finances and health. We are the poorest, fattest state, after all.

Dr. Jones wasn’t making a personal attack, but a simple, brutal observation – that someone who is mooching off the taxpayers shouldn’t be spending their money on expensive cell phones, gold teeth and other luxuries.

Health care is a service – provided TO someone BY someone.  In this case, it’s the taxpayers who are providing this service, because the fat bitch is using her alleged “need” as a claim check to their earnings.

I’ve seen poverty.  Stinking, rancid, wearing clothes discarded by other people in their trash, picking through garbage for scraps poverty.  People living in poverty do not purchase gold teeth.  People living in poverty do not purchase expensive cell phones.  People in poverty do not spend hundreds of dollars on tattoos.  People who are truly needy in this society spend every penny trying to survive.  This fat bitch does not sound like one of those people. 

And yet… we, the people, support her fat ass.  We pay people like Dr. Jones to give her medical treatment – to use his years of training and hard work to give her a service she should be paying for on her own. 

Screw that.

We need to turn off our TVs and radios and do our own research on health care reform. All the Fox-fed and MSNBC-led masses are out spewing the same language the pundits are using.

[...]

his country deserves more. Read the health care reform bill. And learn the real issues of our entire community. We’re all Americans.

This is no “us vs. them” issue. We are all in this together.

No.  We are not all in this together. Some of us work our asses off every day.  Some of us work two jobs to ensure that our children have everything they need to grow up to be healthy, intelligent, stable adults.  Some of us don’t waste our earnings on frivolous crap such as tattoos and gold teeth.  Some of us get up at 0400 and don’t get home until well after 1800.

And those of us who do that, have to pay for someone who uses Medicaid entitlements at others’ expense, who apparently has enough to purchase superfluous shit such as grillz for her teeth, body art, expensive, brand name shoes, and top of the line cell phones.

You know what it’s called when those who work their asses off daily and make intelligent, responsible fiscal decisions are forced to support those who don’t pay a thing for services, but are wealthy enough to make lavish purchases?

It’s called slavery.

And when it comes to being a slave and supporting an indolent, wasteful, irresponsible minority (minority as in the minority of the population who are truly in need of public assistance, not racial minority – before anyone starts screeching RAAAAACISM!), it is “us vs. them.”

“If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders – What would you tell him?”

“I…don’t know. What…could he do? What would you tell him?”

“To shrug.”

— Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)