Ayn Rand Must Be Turning Over In Her Grave!

Pictured here is a young physician by the name of Dr. Starner Jones.  His short two-paragraph letter to the White House sent to and published by The Clarion Ledger, accurately puts the blame on a "Culture Crisis" instead of a "Health Care Crisis".  It "Snopes" as "Correctly Attributed", which is unusual for a liberal fact finding site like Snopes.  Usually they only find like this when it is UNDENIABLE.  However, because they always try to bend everything to the left, The Ledger posted a weak response to Dr. Jones in order to push the left's agenda.  The response from Jennifer follows Dr. Jones letter, and then an additional comment from me follows both letters.  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 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



On 6 September 2009 the Clarion Ledger published a response from Jennifer:

"I’ve been stewing about an Aug. 23 letter to the editor (“Why pay for the care of the careless?) in which Dr. Starner Jones questioned the worth of a patient to receive Medicaid because of her gold tooth, tattoos, R&B ring tone on a new cell phone, cigarette-smoking and beer-drinking.


This kind of personal attack is nothing new with the hateful rhetoric of late.  But it’s a real slippery slope when one questions whether another human merits support for health care because of appearances and choices.  There are a lot of folks in this state who make less-than-perfect choices about finances and health.  We are the poorest, fattest state, after all.


We need to turn off our TVs and radios and do our own research on health care reform.  All the Fox-fed and MSNBC-led masses are out spewing the same language the pundits are using.


Look at entities who, bottom line, want to raise their rating and celebrity, not facilitate a meeningful or productive discourse.


This country deserves more.  Read the health care reform bill.  And learn the real issues of our entire community.  We're all Americans.  This is no "us vs. them" issue.  We are all in this together.


Jennifer Sigrest"


Ms. Sigrest's comment is the typical liberal response - trying to turn a societal issue into a personal issue.  Of COURSE everyone has the right to tattoos  etc.  The problem is that this patient made her choices such that it costs other people to pay for the consequence of her choices.  Get thousands of dollars of tattoos if you wish, but choices have consequences, so don't go to the taxpayers to pay for your health insurance - we all chose to pay for our OWN health insurance, not yours.  If you are asking me to pay for your health insurance, then I get a say in the way you treat your body.   Contact Ms. Sigrest if you need help, and go ahead and try to force her as you try to force taxpayers - you might get lucky?

A quote from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged:

"We're all one big family, they told us, we're all in this together. But you don't stand working an acetylene torch ten hours a day -- together, and you don't all get a bellyache -- together. Whose ability and which of whose needs comes first? When it's all one pot, you can't let any man decide what his own needs are, can you? If you did, he might claim he needs a yacht -- and if his feelings is all you have to go by, he might prove it, too. Why not? If it's not right for me to own a car until I've worked myself into a hospital ward, earning a car for every loafer and every naked savage on Earth -- why can't he demand a yacht from me, too, if I still have the ability not to have collapsed?"


For "yacht" in the above quote from Atlas Shrugged, feel free to substitute "tattoos," or "cell phone," or "gold tooth".... or "medical care."  If you don't want to read the book, see the movie "Atlas Shrugged which came out a week or so ago.  Of course liberals hate the book/movie because it wasn't written by the "evil rich hater" Michael Moore.