by Maria Brogna

Created on: February 13, 2009

As a person who has suffered the unwelcome company of more than one drug addict in my life my opinion is that the healthcare system does far too much for young substance abusers. This may not be a popular view but watching perfectly healty people become drug addicts and then the system coddle them for bringing this on themselves I must admit I become very irritated.

When speaking to a nurse she told me that the healthcare system requires them to free up a bed immediatly when a young drug abuser comes in. This is because drug addiction in Massachusetts is considered a disease and is labled with a disease status. This means that if you are sick with am a infection or you have a broken leg you will be sitting in the waiting room another 3 hours while some 16 year old lays in a hospital bed and awaits his or her high grade fix. Hardly seems fair.

Also there is no limit on how many times this can occur and the cost is always absorbed by the state. Since drug addiction has become disease status in our state I have myself seen an uprise in substance abuse and once these people learn that they can get social security for being a drug addict they act as though they have hit the lottery. People judge single mothers for being leaches on the system, but there is some sort of perverse forgiveness for people who choose and yes I said "choose" to be drug addicts.

Becoming a drug addicts isnt an easy feat. An individual has to work at it, really put all the effort they may have used getting a job or going to school to make everyone around them lives miserable. I have never in my experience with the 15 drug addicts I have known seen one of them suffer. Never seen one of them go without and never seen one of them sorry for the pain and torment they have cause their families.

I have witness vicious narcissism and arrogance with these substance abusing youth. I have seen them demand a bed in a hospital and curse a sick child that stands in the way. Yes the healthcare system does far too much for young substance abusers and not enough for people who are actually sick. Maybe if there were any real fear in not getting treatment and not receiving help above all others than they would have to learn to take some responsibility.

These things may sound harsh, but not as harsh as the reality that they put everyone around them through. Including when they decide to have a child in order to double their money from the government. Yes they do this. Once the money is cut after the child's second birthday most of them give the child away to a relative and one I know of inparticular showed up at the Department of Social Services the day after the welfare was cut and told the worker she didnt want the child anymore. The child was lost in the system for 2 years until she was given to her grandmother who had fought to get her back. The mother however was given money and couseling as well as a job that she was not qualified for in order to help her get her life back together and all paid for by the state healthcare system.

The child's mother now lives in a house with her boyfriend and has everything she wants including a new baby. She has traded her crackhead ways for alcoholism and keeping her boyfriend happy in order to keep her life. But her daughter lives here, wanting everyday for a normal life and asking me why her mother loves the new baby but didnt want her? How does one answer that? Why did the system care more about a mother that abandoned her child than the child? I guess that is a question for someone other than me.

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