A Crisis of Culture

The following email, whether true or not, is right on target.

Purportedly from Starner Jones, MD, of Jackson, Mississippi, he wrote to the White House:

"I am a seventh generation Mississippian and wanted to come back here after going somewhere else for college and medical school. My extracurricular interests are golf, hunting, fishing and college football.

"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 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?"