The Welfare Queen Rises Again

Zotnix pointed me to this viral email making the rounds:

Dear Mr. President: During my shift in the
Emergency Room last night, I had the
pleasure of evaluating a patient whose
smile revealed an expensive shiny gold
tooth, whose body was adorned with a wide
assortment of elaborate and costly
tattoos, who wore a very expensive brand
of tennis shoes and who chatted on a new
cellular telephone equipped with a popular
R&B ringtone.

While glancing over her patient chart, I
happened to notice that her payer status
was listed as "Medicaid"! During my
examination of her, the patient informed
me that she smokes more than one costly
pack of cigarettes every day and somehow
still has money to buy pretzels and beer.
And, you and our Congress expect me to pay
for this woman's health care? I contend
that our nation's "health care crisis" is
not the result of a shortage of quality
hospitals, doctors or nurses.  Rather, it
is the result of a "crisis of culture", a
culture in which it is perfectly
acceptable to spend money on luxuries and
vices while refusing to take care of one's
self or, heaven forbid, purchase health
insurance. It is a culture based in the
irresponsible credo that "I can do
whatever I want to because someone else
will always take care of me".

Once you fix this "culture crisis" that
rewards irresponsibility and dependency,
you'll be amazed at how quickly our
nation's health care difficulties will
disappear.

Respectfully,

STARNER JONES, MD

The letter has a legitimate source, according to Snopes, and did appear in a newspaper's Letters to the Editor section.  Now, aside from the letter's overall argument regarding the health care coverage situation in the US, there is another element here which rings very familiar.  It's almost as if I have heard something similar used before:

She has eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve Social Security cards and is collecting veteran's benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She's got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income is over $150,000."

Hmm, okay, let's tally up the similarities:

1. Subject is female?  √


2. Subject is receiving federal/public aid of some kind?   √


3. Subject is gaming the system and profiting unfairly?  √

Okay, let's see another example:

"young teenage girls from poor families, essentially black families, thought that they had a duty to have babies in order to get on the welfare rolls because each baby was being paid two or three hundred dollars a month or more."

Here we see the blatant introduction of race along with the familiar "gaming of the system", in this case, having babies in order to collect more money.  The racial factor is prevalent throughout the Welfare Queen myth, even going back to Reagan's famous introduction of it earlier.  The popular perception of the Welfare Queen, according to studies on the subject, centers on some basic components present in all variations:

1. The person is black and usually a female.


2. The person collects Federal aid of some kind.


3. The person lives a lifestyle seeming out of step with their supposed poverty (eating well, driving a nice car, large television, etc.)


4. The person is obviously gaming the system to achieve these luxuries.

In the original letter, above, all of these elements are present or referenced in some way.  Race is introduced tacitly through the "gold and gem encrusted tooth" and the "R&B ringtone".  Further excesses are demonstrated with the "tattoos" and "expensive tennis shoes", along with the "expensive cell phone".  The kicker is put into place by showing the subject is receiving public assistance in the form of Medicaid, a form of health insurance available to the poorest class.

The author draws his conclusions based on his estimates of the "costliness" of the items in question, never considering whether his estimates are accurate or whether she was, in fact, responsible for paying those costs.  From that, he derives she is gaming the system and that his "taxes" are going to support her.  He doesn't even consider whether or not she is working or has worked and also paid taxes into the system for the safety net she now enjoys.  Ultimately, he holds her up as a shining example of a crisis in the system and the culture itself over any other factors.

[caption id="attachment_554" align="alignleft" width="400" caption="Another example is this photo, snapped at a homeless shelter where Michelle Obama volunteered. The usual caption typically makes the assumption a poor homeless (and black) man still can afford a camera phone."][/caption]

Despite the fact the source of the letter is legitimate in the sense that it actually appeared in a real newspaper, we have no other information on the individual who wrote it other than he appears to be a real doctor.  His apocryphal story, like Reagan's, utilizes popular stereotypes and cliches in his argument against reforming health care coverage in the US.  Given such use of cliches, it's hard not to conclude this letter is either a conglomerate of individual and overheard anecdotes or is entirely made up in order to serve his point, a strawman argument.

Dr. Jones' argument in itself is flawed, as another letter demonstrated succinctly in a follow up letter to the same newspaper by another person:

I've been stewing about an Aug. 23 letter to the editor ("Why pay for the care of the careless?") in which Dr. Starner Jones questioned the worth of a patient to receive Medicaid because of her gold tooth, tattoos, R&B ring tone on a new cell phone, cigarette-smoking and beer-drinking.

This kind of personal attack is nothing new with the hateful rhetoric of late. But it's a real slippery slope when one questions whether another human merits support for health care because of appearances and choices. There are a lot of folks in this state who make less-than-perfect choices about finances and health. We are the poorest, fattest state, after all.

We need to turn off our TVs and radios and do our own research on health care reform. All the Fox-fed and MSNBC-led masses are out spewing the same language the pundits are using.

Look at entities who, bottom line, want to raise their ratings and celebrity, not facilitate a meaningful or productive discourse.

This country deserves more. Read the health care reform bill. And learn the real issues of our entire community. We're all Americans.

This is no "us vs. them" issue. We are all in this together.

Jennifer Sigrest

Clinton