Here’s an ER Doctor can not only treat you, he can size up your financial situation at a glance. He’ll also write up a helpful critique of your lifestyle and publish it in the local newspaper at no extra charge!
Dr. Jones wrote this letter to the editor back in August, 2009, but it’s gone viral and showed up today in my daily Facebook parade of Very Wise Posts, followed by comments of “So true!” and “Amen!” Thank goodness for Facebook or I might have missed this!
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 ring tone.
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 President 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
All I can say in response to that is: Well put, Doctor Jones! You’ve hit this nail squarely and soundly on the head. Anybody who’s in such desperate need of medical care that they would resort to applying for Medicaid ought to be willing to demonstrate their dire straits by not only swearing off beer and cigarettes forever, they should also voluntarily submit to blood tests to prove it! It’s an inconsequential interruption of their civil rights to secure such a huge measure of help.
You also have a sharp eye for fiscal responsibility, Dr. Jones! Now that the price of gold has skyrocketed to more than $1,200.00 an ounce, gold teeth should, of course, be pulled from the mouths of every Medicaid patient and hocked to help defer the cost of further medical treatment. I’m sure suitable replacements cost only a tiny fraction of the benefits reaped from each gold tooth surrendered.
And tattoos! Don’t get me started on tattoos! Used to be you hardly ever saw them, but now that our clean-cut American culture is going down the tubes you can’t swing a stethoscope without hitting somebody covered in tattoos. Since we’re paying for their medical care anyway, anybody on Medicaid should sign a consent form agreeing to have all their tattoos removed by laser surgery. I understand it’s almost painless and takes only a few days to zap each tattoo into oblivion.
People on Medicaid shouldn’t have the disposable income to spend on cable television, SUVs and roomy apartments or, god forbid, their own homes! Anyone applying for Medicaid ought to direct-deposit their paycheck into the system so that every penny of their income could be accounted for. Any money not used to cover their medical treatment would be refunded, of course, and ought to be more than enough to rent an efficiency apartment in a decent part of town. As for transportation, god gave everybody two good legs, and nobody’s too good to ride the bus to the ER.
You, sir, are my hero! Keep up the good fight!
This Is Drivel 
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