Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Cultural Crisis perhaps?

I was sent this email today by my sister in law. Whether this particular story is true, this person is actually a physician, or this letter was ever actually written to the White House is irrelevant to me considering the fact that this occurs daily around this wonderful country of ours.

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 costly pack of cigarettes every day 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,
STARNER JONES,MD

Working in the medical field, I deal with this on a DAILY basis. Don't even get me started on what types of cars they drive (nicer than mine I assure you). This problem is nothing new to the current administration so I am not going to point fingers, but if the current administration allows this to continue and worsen, than it IS their problem! I am so tired of having to be politically correct about EVERYTHING!!! That is what is wrong with this country right now. No one wants to tell these people to go out a get a damn job! I don't want to hear about the current employment rates or any other bullshit either. When employment rates were fine, they still didn't work. They rely on me and all the other tax payers to give them what they need. We have made it far too easy for them to milk and abuse the system. The welfare system was put in to place during the Great Depression by FDR for "emergency purposes." Even then the "New Deal focused predominantly on a program of providing work and stimulating the economy through public spending on projects, rather than on cash payments." What the fuck happened? I'll tell you what happened. The current welfare system offers no incentives for the people getting welfare to EVER come off of it! Why the hell would they ever want to come off welfare? Let's see, I don't have to work and can sit on my lazy ass all day and I can collect money? Sign me up! My grandmother became widowed at a very young age with two small children to support. Did she get any kind of assistance? Hell no! She worked. I didn't have maternity coverage when I was pregnant with my first child. Did I go apply for Medicaid to pay for it? Hell no. I set up a payment plan. I know that's a foreign thought process to some people, but it can be done. The people that need to be on welfare for various reasons get declined right and left. We have a patient who wants to terminate her pregnancy because the fetus has several MAJOR problems and is not going to survive after birth and they will not pay for it, yet this same government run "insurance company" will let another patient spit out as many babies as she is capable of doing (thus supporting them when they are born). They are so stupid to realize that her hospital charges when she delivers are going to cost us the tax payers far more than a termination. Complete idiots!! If we weren't dumping so much money into this "program" we may be able to afford to send more help to Haiti where it is much needed. Another quake (6.1) hit them.

By all means, let's continue this downward spiral into hell!

One of the best bumper stickers I have ever read:


That about sums that up!

3 comments:

Diane said...

Darling Mel...there is very little that I can say on the subject that you write about here. I think I know a man that can though..and without doubt he will :)

Anyway, this sort of discussion is one that you can only really have face to face outside Buckingham Palace while yelling rather loudly at each other. So..shall we call that a date for July then?

Melanie said...

Yes I know just the person you speak of, lol! And yes we shall call it a date :)

Dick said...

My brother worked in the public assistance department in Washington State (but in computers.) He has told me that the main problem with the welfare system in the US goes back to it's origins. After WW I when there were a lot of people out of work they looked for a system of assistance. What they settled on was something from the South that had been used to provide assistance to farm workers during the time of the year when there was no farm work.

It worked well there, but the problem with it was that those people had work, just not at that time, so there were no provisions incorporated into it to encourage finding work. In the South it was really more of an unemployment benefit package as those people went back to work when their seasonal work came back. The economy needed them and it was worth paying them some money during the off-season to help to keep them available for when they were needed. It just wasn't a plan that was geared to provide assistance to those who didn't have work on the horizon.

Like so much our government does, good intentions were not really properly thought out and it was years later before they made any attempts to fix the problem. It still needs fixing.