Health Care Debate (under construction)

This Letter to the Editor, written by Doctor Jones about health care in America, is from the August 29th edition of Jackson, Mississippi’s newspaper, the Clarion Ledger.

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, MS

The below comments are my response to the above letter written by a doctor in Mississippi and posted on Facebook recently. I'm still mulling over my thoughts on this so it's a long way from my final word on this issue.

For every one of his examples I could site you five examples of hard working, honest people who can't afford health care under the current system. Yes we all know people who spend money on stuff they want as opposed to things they need but his 'letter' is a disservice to the millions of people who need healthcare and have no avenue for receiving it. This is not a crisis of culture because for every hip-hop ringtone, cellphone using, gold tooth wearing person there is someone like my mother who God knows might still be alive if she'd been properly insured. But I'm sure he'd simply point out that she spent money on cigarettes as an example of her being non deserving of healthcare.

Another example, my Dad, a man who lives in constant pain and still works long past the point when he should be able to retire and finally get the break he has worked hard for and deserves more than most. But he has to keep working to pay for his expensive healthcare and even still it isn't enough. He does without so much that he needs to treat his pains and illnesses because he can't afford it. So mr doctor know it all needs to take off his colored glasses and realizes this crises isn't one simply of culture, this crisis is real and it affects billions of people, good and bad.

Maybe the current healthcare reform isn't perfect but perhaps if people would work together to improve it rather than simply tearing it down we might just find an answer that works. But too many people would rather sit around moaning and complaining about 'big govmint' taking away their rights than actually put forth a little effort to find solutions. Is the Government perfect? God no nor do they have all the answers but someone has to start somewhere or this 'crisis' is going to continue to overwhelm our already fragile economy and infrastructure. Instead of writing about people who he feels doesn't deserve healthcare maybe he should start offering his services free or at a more reasonable price.

Part of the reason we've reached this crisis is that too many doctors stopped caring about taking care of their patients and become more concerned about amassing wealth. Insurance companies and the medical establishment have pushed us to this crisis, not the Government. Maybe if money hungry insurance companies would cover prevention and education rather than just waiting until someone is sick or dying to cover their costs then we'd find this crisis abating.

Sorry but due to personal experience this is an issue that I refuse to allow anyone to oversimplify or blame on culture. This isn't a religious issue, it isn't an issue of culture nor should it be a political issue but it had to be because no one else was coming up with any answers. Prices continued to soar, people were dying when they should've lived, the few 'socialized' (yes we already have them) systems in place are still overrun and mismanaged. There is no simple answer to this problem but this guy and his ilk aren't part of the solution even though they are in a position to be. Stop talking, start doing.

The Cold Within

Six humans trapped by happenstance
In dark and bitter cold.
Each possessed a stick of wood,
Or so the story's told.

Their dying fire in need of logs,
But the first one held hers back.
For, of the faces around the fire,
She noticed one was black.

The next one looked across the way
Saw one not of his church,
And could not bring himself to give
The fire his stick of birch.

The third one sat in tattered clothes
He gave his coat a hitch.
Why should his log be put to use
To warm the idle rich.

The rich man just sat back and thought
Of wealth he had in store,
And keeping all that he had earned
From the lazy, shiftless poor.

The black man's face bespoke revenge
As the fire passed from his sight,
For he saw in his stick of wood
A chance to spite the white.

And the last man of this forlorn group
Did nought except for gain.
Giving just to those who gave
Was how he played the game.

Their sticks held tight in death's stilled hands
Was proof enough of sin;
They did not die from cold without...
They died from cold within.
~James Patrick Kinney

I think this should be required reading for everyone and it should be reread often. Apply any global, national or local situation to these scenarios and see how fitting it is.

We will be our own undoing in the end. And people who can't see that are going to be leading the charge.

Mondays, ugh

I loathe Mondays and I know I shouldn't, in fact I should celebrate any day that finds me still breathing, and yet, Mondays .. ugh. Worse than your normal run of the mill Mondays are the dreary, cold, miserable Mondays of which today is one.

I'm tired, cold, cranky and just want to be home with my dogs, some music and a book. But alas here I am, at work grousing about Mondays when I should be relishing the fact that I am at least gainfully employed and have a home to go to. Winter doldrums have officially arrived in inglorious splendor.

It isn't that I don't appreciate the good things in my life I just wish they didn't have to constantly compete with the blahs. I swear if I encounter one cheery, silver lining person today I might just punch them in the face. Hey look at that, I smiled, perhaps it won't be a bad day after all.

A blog a day ....

or two or three, whatever it takes to excise the demons of doubt from my thoughts.