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.