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.
For argument’s sake:
- “shiny new gold tooth…”
- $500-$1200
- “multiple elaborate tattoos…”
- What do you mean by “elaborate”? A whole back full of tats might be $1200. I imagine Jones would be shocked by much less: $200-$500.
- “a new cellular telephone equipped with her favorite R&B tune for a ring tone”
- $0-$100 with an almost any common monthly plan. My wife carries a phone that doubles as an MP3 player. An iPhone 3gs? No. A Sony-Ericsson that cost us $14.99.
I hope this woman read your letter, Dr. Jones. I hope she knows that the physician she trusted in the ER, the previous night, thinks she could afford adequate health care on her own, if not for her profane, debauched, and costly habits. I know enough people that fit your superficial description. I know, too, that many of them were taught to pray that you don’t reap what you’ve sown. The problem with our culture is not that a few people pay too much for crowns and ringtones. The problem is that too many in our society believe they can make judgements about others’ values and spending habits based on a brief encounter in an emergency room.
Dr. Jones’ rant about this woman’s dental work and cell phone have become yet another red herring in the American debate on healthcare. It leads the willing off onto the tangent of “These losers who waste their money on shoes, tattoos, and ringtones are the only ones who want the rest of us to pay for THEIR healthcare.” It leads us away from the fact that our system doesn’t work, isn’t viable, is too costly, isn’t the best in the world, and many among us –not even just the poorest- are not assured access to adequate care within it.
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