I can has smrt kulcher?

Ry forwards me the following chain email:

Friends & Associates,

Please meet Dr Starner Jones from Jackson , Mississippi . [see photo below].

His short 2-paragraph letter to the White House accurately puts the blame on a "Culture Crisis" instead of a "Health Care Crisis". Its worth a quick read:

Starner Jones, MD
I am a seventh generation Mississippian and wanted to come back here after going somewhere else for college and medical school.. My extracurricular interests are golf, hunting, fishing and college football.


Dear Sirs:

"During my last night's shift in the ER, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient with an expensive shiny gold tooth, multiple elaborate expensive 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

Now, this email obviously displays some hallmarks of Southern white racism. The woman being described is implied to be black, because her favorite tune is R&B* (not sure how country would be more conducive to health). even if the real woman was white, readers of the email won't picture her that way. This, of course, reflects Southern whites' conceit that "poor" = "black". In actuality, there are plenty of poor Southern whites, and plenty of them (and middle-class Southern whites) are fat and unhealthy. The mistaken belief that only blacks are poor is one thing preventing Southern whites from enjoying more efficient government services.

But I digress. My main point is that the writer of this letter is mostly right. National health care would reduce costs and improve quality of care for most patients, but it still would not bring our health spending down to the level of other rich countries, because we have atrocious public health in this country. Americans simply do not take as good care of their bodies as Japanese or French people. And that is a big problem.

But...how does Starner Jones propose we solve that problem?

Imagine if we had healthy school lunches, grocery stores in every neighborhood, more walkable cities, and a tax on sugar in drinks and snacks. We would see some big changes in our public health. But notice that Starner Jones doesn't understand that. He thinks culture can just change itself - he thinks people can just collectively wise up and get it together. And he's almost certainly wrong.

Yes, culture matters. But policy is the only way we can change culture on purpose. Maybe if Jones were a white of Northern descent, and not from a state settled by the criminals of England's gutters, he'd have a higher IQ, so he would be able to understand that fact.

Oh whoops, haha, did I say that in public? Silly me. Now forward this to all your friends! :-)

* Actually, if Starner Jones meant to describe a black woman, he has his stereotypes mixed up. Black people consume less alcohol than any other ethnic group in the nation. They also smoke less in Mississippi. Something tells me they are also probably less likely to get tattoos, for obvious reasons...