I don’t have much of a heart. Most of y’all know this to be true. It’s not that I don’t have a heart, exactly, it’s that I’m stingy about who I feel compassion and empathy towards. A lot of people out there aren’t truly grief stricken, or sick, or poverty level, they are simply desiring attention. I have no patience for these people. I also strongly dislike the ones who take advantage of the system. Able-bodied individuals who seek out funding through good-hearted folks or the government. I see it regularly, people looking for handouts in parking lots, gas stations, walking into random businesses, begging at churches. And these GoFundMe pages are panhandling via internet, plain and simple. NOT that I’m saying there aren’t plenty of deserving citizens out there-but the ones who are taking advantage make it that much harder for the truly deserving crowd to get the help they need.

My office is situated directly across from a low-income clinic. I’m not precisely sure how it works, but I know its purpose is to serve the needy and uninsured. All day long, I watch as a parade of young people in souped up cars jounce in and out. They seem to get around just fine. Not sure what they go there seeking, as it is not a pain clinic, but whatever. I tell you what I’d do…but I didn’t take the doctor’s oath.

I’d make a mighty poor doctor. My advice seems to always be the same, “Suck it up. Here’s a tangerine.”

Anyway. I went out to the mailbox this absolutely frigid morning (I’m talking of the caliber to freeze your nose hairs in place) and I noticed an old bent lady making her way to the entrance of the clinic. She was stooped and shuffling, leaning on a younger man’s arm. I imagined he was her son. Her hair was parted and white, almost the color of her sweater. It made me stop in my tracks. If my tear ducts hadn’t been frozen, I’m afraid they would have leaked.

She was the type of person who really needed this kind of institution. She was old, and her supplemental insurance or Medicare probably wouldn’t do much to cover a visit to her general practitioner. She was legitimately sick, you could tell just from the way she walked. And even though she was old, and sick, and poor, she had dressed in actual clothes. She wasn’t wearing her pajamas and flip flops. She had gotten up (early) and made an effort to look her best.

I’m not blaming doctors for charging what they do. They have bills, too: rent for their office space, equipment, insurance for malpractice suits- I don’t EVEN want to think about what that costs-, and of course they’re paying back their student loans for pretty much their entire working life. It’s disgusting. And just like the rest of us, they’re paying taxes, and have a mortgage, and a car payment and all the things that make up a life. No, I don’t blame the doctors.

I blame people who are here illegally, working for cash, who pocket more a week than the average person sees in three months. I blame the lazy, who are able to work but would rather work at getting all they can from the TAX PAYING CITIZENS. These are the ones who go to the free clinics because there’s no requirement to show your wages, there’s no paperwork to prove you have insurance, there’s no judgmental eyes on you from the righteous seated in the waiting room. Because 90% of them are just. Like. You. They suck the funds dry and there’s nothing left for the deserving. and lets face it, most of the older generation isn’t internet savvy and not sure where to apply to get help. AND DON’T GET ME STARTED ON THE SORRY BENEFITS FOR OUR VETERANS.

I hope that some of these worthless rats came in yesterday and saw the hunched woman sitting there, patiently waiting her turn to be seen from a tired, overworked, underappreciated doctor or nurse practitioner, bent from a racking cough.

And I hope they left. Because they aren’t sick. They’re just killing time till their next high, getting what they can off people who have the desire to do no harm.

Leeches.

There may not be any judgmental eyes in the waiting room, but there is a pair across the street. And I’m not sorry.