"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 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. 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.

STARNER JONES,MD

My take on all this is as follows.

Given her lifestyle, she won’t have a normal life-span to be a drain on the system. So, if she’s happy with the choices she’s made, so be it.

But check her family background, and see if she’s a multigenerational system dependent.
If she is, put her on strict “get your life together” probation. Require her to pass drug, alcohol and tobacco tests. If she breaks that probation, tie her tubes, and don’t allow her to reproduce.

As it is with the rest of us that enjoy the liberty won for us in these United States, she’s free to make her own choices.

But if those choices lead to another welfare generation in the wake of her that will also be dependent for their meals and care, we as a nation need to intervene. We need to break this chain of dependence we’ve allowed society to enable over the past several generations.

We must embrace and care for the impoverished. God love the poor among us. But if it’s self-imposed, and has been in previous generations of a drunken, drug influenced family history, we as a free nation must intervene to elevate us all.