Observations from Others

There are times when I don’t have the time or the motivation to write something orginal for my blog. The last couple of weeks have been among those times. I have not gone into hibernation, however, although I am tempted to do so when I am reading the newspaper or watching the evening news on television. Even though I have nothing original to write this week, I would like to share with you two comments written by others that have recently come to my attention.

First, I received an e-mail from a friend this week containing the text of a “letter to the editor” written by an emergency room doctor to The Clarion Ledger, the newspaper in Jackson, Mississippi. The letter to the editor, which was written by Dr. Starner Jones, reads as follows:

“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 ring tone. 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
Jackson, Mississippi

Second, The Wall Street Journal on November 10, 2009 published an editorial quoting a liberal supporter of the current health care reform efforts. The editorial was entitled “Confessions of an ObamaCare Backer.” It reads as follows:

“The typical argument for ObamaCare is that it will offer better medical care for everyone and cost less to do it, but occasionally a supporter lets the mask slip and reveals the real political motivation. So let's give credit to John Cassidy, part of the left-wing stable at the New Yorker, who wrote last week on its Web site that ‘it's important to be clear about what the reform amounts to.’

“Mr. Cassidy is more honest than the politicians whose dishonesty he supports. ‘The U.S. government is making a costly and open-ended commitment,’ he writes. ‘Let's not pretend that it isn't a big deal, or that it will be self-financing, or that it will work out exactly as planned. It won't. What is really unfolding, I suspect, is the scenario that many conservatives feared. The Obama Administration . . . is creating a new entitlement program, which, once established, will be virtually impossible to rescind.’

“Why are they doing it? Because, according to Mr. Cassidy, ObamaCare serves the twin goals of ‘making the United States a more equitable country’ and furthering the Democrats' ‘political calculus.’ In other words, the purpose is to further redistribute income by putting health care further under government control, and in the process making the middle class more dependent on government. As the party of government, Democrats will benefit over the long run.

“This explains why Nancy Pelosi is willing to risk the seats of so many Blue Dog Democrats by forcing such an unpopular bill through Congress on a narrow, partisan vote: You have to break a few eggs to make a permanent welfare state. As Mr. Cassidy concludes, ‘Putting on my amateur historian's cap, I might even claim that some subterfuge is historically necessary to get great reforms enacted.’

"No wonder many Americans are upset. They know they are being lied to about ObamaCare, and they know they are going to be stuck with the bill.”

I know I have many friends and relatives who disagree with my political views and will disagree with the views expressed above. I pray they are right and I am wrong.