Reagan Warned Us About This

It’s a funny thing about government programs. Since they sprout from laws and regulations, they all come with rulebooks that everyone can read. The law abiding citizen can read them to see what procedures they must follow to comply with the program and the lawbreaker can read the same rules to see how to game the system.

If a particular program is income based, the law abiding citizen will look at his or her income to determine if they qualify. The lawbreaker will see how much income they have to hide to keep their income and get the government handout. Work for cash off the books and you have your spending money. Your equally lawbreaking employer doesn’t have to pay all those nasty taxes like unemployment, FICA, Medicare. However, if you get sick, just go apply for your Medicaid card and you get your free health care as well. Here is how one emergency room doctor saw it.

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 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, MS

Letter to the Editor, Clarion Ledger, Jackson, Mississippi, August 29, 2009

 

If this individual fell on the law abiding side of the line, how can they afford to buy a gold tooth, with gold around $1,300 per ounce? How can they afford to spend money on tattoos, cigarettes, and beer but expect you and me to pay for their health care? But in a government run system, if the government can’t prove they have an income, the government has to provide what the program calls for. In a private charity setting, a degree of objectivity can be employed.

I am reminded of the construction worker who goes to pick up his unemployment check with wet concrete still on his construction boots. The clerk asks, “Have you looked for work?” “Yup, he replies.” “Have you found work?” “Nope.” The clerk weighs the decision of questioning his boots and then decides it’s not worth the hassle and hands over the check. If that worker was asking for the funds from his minister or priest, perhaps the conversation would go differently. It seems to be a badge of honor among many of what they can get away with from the government. “I’m taking the summer off. Why not, I get my unemployment check and I can stay at my sister’s beach house. I can always waitress for cash in the local restaurant if I need more money and in the fall, I’ll start looking seriously.”

We are fast becoming a country where a large number of people expect the government to take care of them. There is a major education effort needed to turn this around, and I don’t mean K-12. I mean understanding how truly bad the government is at doing these things. For example, if I took the same amount of money that the government withheld for Social Security and invested in the Dow Jones Industrial average in the boom years and the bust years, I could easily generate an income double what Social Security would provide and still have nearly $800,000 dollars in principal that I can pass to my heirs. But instead we are saddled with a ponzi scheme that will bankrupt our children and leave them with nothing but debt.

It’s time to take personal responsibility and realize that Uncle Sam is not some rich old guy who made his fortune speculating in pork bellies and is willing to share it with his nieces and nephews. He doesn’t have a farthing other than what he extracts from your pocket today, or with an IOU that comes due in the future. Why not keep your money in your own pocket and spend some of it wisely and invest the rest for your future?

Today is Ronald Reagan’s birthday. He warned us that the most frightening words in the English language were, “I’m from the government and I am here to help you.” We need to take those words as seriously as a heart attack.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours.  Please comment below.