Contempt for People on Medicaid

In the summer of 2009, there was a serious debate going on about the need for healthcare reform, and many people showed their bigoted views out in the open. One was a doctor, who wrote a "Letter to the Editor" of his Jackson, Miss. newspaper. It became a viral email and went wild across America.

That Facebook page has since gone dead, but it pictured a young physician by the name of Dr. Roger Starner Jones. His short two-paragraph "open letter" to the White House accurately puts the blame on a "Culture Crisis" instead of a "Health Care Crisis".

It's worth a quick read:

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

A long (and hostile) Facebook thread ensued in which I was at odds with my brother and my nephew. My nephew went so far as to call the inner-city poor "sub-par samples of humanity" who didn't deserve to live and contribute their DNA to the future of the human race. His Social Darwinism is another topic entirely, but I will save that for later.

When I explained this Facebook wall "conversation" to Kala Luzia, a Librarian II at the African-American Research Library and Cultural Center on Sistrunk Blvd., this was her response:

Snopes has verified this story and provided a counter viewpoint from the same newspaper that published Dr. Jones' "Letter to the Editor."

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