Letter to the editor by a Mississippi physician criticizes a patient's lifestyle choices.

This should be on the front page of every newspaper in America — in large bold letters.

On 23 August 2009, the Jackson, Mississippi Clarion Ledger published a letter to the editor from Dr. Roger Starner Jones, a physician who specializes in emergency medicine at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Dr. Jones' letter was published under the title "Why Pay for the Care of the Careless?" and read as follows:

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Dear Sirs:

During my last night's shift in the ER, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient with a shiny new gold tooth, multiple elaborate tattoos, a very expensive brand of tennis shoes and a new cellular telephone equipped with her favorite R&B tune for a ringtone. Glancing over the chart, one could not help noticing her payer status: Medicaid. She smokes more than one costly pack of cigarettes every day and, somehow, still has money to buy beer.

And our Congress 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. A culture that thinks "I can do whatever I want to because someone else will always take care of me". Life is really not that hard. Most of us reap what we sow.
Don't you agree?

STARNER JONES, MD
Jackson, MS

Are They Both As Dumb As They Appear?

Last time I checked you put your right hand over your heart on the left!
Computer trick, mirror image or reversing the negative?
Check out the ring finger on each- both on the left hand.
And his suit coat is buttoned properly.
Pay no attention to what he says---Watch only what he does!