Letter from a Mississippi doctor

This letter is making the rounds, but I thought I would post it here as well.

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 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?

STARNER JONES, MD Jackson , MS

This tracks with a conversation I had over Thanksgiving. A woman approaching retirement age stated that when she was younger, she made buying health care coverage a priority over going out all the time. She asked me why she should have to pay to cover people that make the opposite decision than she did. I had no answer for her. Before they institute nationalized health care the politicians better be able to give her one.