DISCRIMINATION BY ANY OTHER NAME

Posted on Facebook more than once, from "a young physician by the name of Dr. Roger Starner Jones. His short letter to the White House accurately puts the blame on a 'Culture Crisis' instead of a 'Health Care Crisis'.."

Dear Mr. President:

During my shift in the Emergency Room last night, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient whose smile revealed an expensive shiny gold tooth, whose body was adorned with a wide assortment of elaborate and costly tattoos, who wore a very expensive brand of tennis shoes and who chatted on a new cellular telephone equipped with a popular R&B ringtone.

While glancing over her patient chart, I happened to notice that her payer status was listed as "Medicaid"! During my examination of her, the patient informed me that she smokes more than one pack of cigarettes every day, eats only at fast-food take-outs, and somehow still has money to buy pretzels and beer.

And you and our Congress expect me to pay for this woman's health care? I contend that our nation's "health care crisis" is not the result of a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses.

Rather, it is the result of a "crisis of culture" a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on luxuries and vices while refusing to take care of one's self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance.

It is a culture based in the irresponsible credo that "I can do whatever I want to because someone else will always take care of me". Once you fix this "culture crisis" that rewards irresponsibility and dependency, you'll be amazed at how quickly our nation's health care difficulties will disappear.

Respectfully,

ROGER STARNER JONES, MD

 

By this same logic, we should refuse medical treatment for anyone who smokes - and then obviously for their children who have been raised in a smoky environment and have or possibly will take up the filthy habit.

Truly obese people would be denied medical treatment - I mean, we all know that can be avoided - it's like they’ve been buying food when they could be getting health insurance, right?

So how about overweight? Forty pounds? Twenty? Ten? Same reasons, right? And underweight anorexic teenage girls? They should be turned away from even the school nurse office.

This slippery slope is exactly why we desperately DO need health care for everyone equally.

Who would you want to determine if YOU are one of these "culture crisis" individuals and therefore can be turned away from the emergency room?

What if you have pierced ears - you wear contacts - you have stopped at McDonald's this week to get your kids Happy Meals?

Discrimination is discrimination regardless of the terms used - we are not the judges of who is worthy of what. We do not know who people were raised, who installed different values in them, what trials they have been through - God is the only appropriate judge of that.

"Equal under law" is something our Founding Fathers believed in - and so do I. Other people may not spend their money the way I want them to - they may dress differently - they may even be unbelievably STUPID. But they have the right in the U.S.A. to do that - and I have the right to be just as stupid in my own way. That, my friends, is freedom - people being able to do things you may very well not approve of.