Fear and Loathing in Jackon: Dr. Jones’ Over-Quoted Letter Quoted Again
Lately, I’ve noticed Dr. Roger Starner Jones‘ careless letter –of 23 August 2009 to the Jackson, Mississippi Clarion Ledger- making the rounds of the anti-healthcare-reform blogosphere. Jones, an ER physician University of Mississippi Medical Center.
During my last shift in the ER, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient with a shiny new gold tooth, multiple elaborate tattoos 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 a 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.
Life is really not that hard. Most of us reap what we sow.
Starner Jones, MD
Jackson
He doesn’t mention that the woman actually told him how much she spent on these extravagances, and when. He says the gold was recent, but did he do better than just assume that? Gold crowns generally cost the same or less than porcelain crowns. Maybe someone else insisted on paying for that. At any rate, I doubt seriously that the woman in question was spending $800/month on smokes, beer, ringtones, phone service, and tattoos. She could easily spend much more than that on individual health insurance.












