A lot of people seem to think that if we only had enough money, many of America's problems could... Commentary: Many problems c

Melissa Matthews of Pierce County, Washington started dealing drugs at age 15, three years after her mother set her up with her first line of meth. Now 20, she's facing charges of car and identity theft. And to top it all off, she may have cervical cancer.

Like 45 million other Americans, Matthews doesn't have health insurance. For some reason the U.S. government treats health care as a privelige, not a right....unless you're a convicted criminal. That's why, in early March, Matthews pled guilty to both charges and opted for seven months' jail time in lieu of getting out for drug rehabilitation. The county has already paid for one of her medical procedures, and now it looks like taxpayers will have to foot the bill for the rest of the young thief's cancer treatment.

The fact that convicts are entitled to tax-based health care while law-abiding citizens must struggle to pay medical bills is absurd, if not insulting. In the context of an ironclad system, even the most well-intentioned policies can and will be manipulated.

It would be great if the government could establish a health care system designed to serve the general welfare, including that of inmates. Unfortunately, there's only one place where policies for the general welfare can function without being taken advantage of.

Within days of Matthews' incarceration, an American Airlines employee made headlines when she led Al Gore past security checkpoints at the Nashville Airport.

The unnamed employee now faces retraining as punishment for the so-called security breach. I seriously doubt that her action was due to lack of familiarity with the airport's policies, but I guess I can see why airport security, among other American institutions, has become so obsessed with equal treatment: treating everyone equally, despite their circumstances, saves authorities the work of actually analyzing the situations at hand.

This predicament applies to medical marijuana as well. Over the past year I've met a surprisingly large number of college students from California who are proud owners of medical marijuana cards. Most aren't going through chemotherapy or even suffering from migraines or back pain; they just want legal protection in case they ever get caught smoking recreationally. Their excuses run the gamut from insomnia to school-related stress. One unusually underweight young man claims he got his card by telling doctors that he had trouble gaining weight because the only way he could work up an appetite was by smoking marijuana. The fact that such tactics supposedly result in prescriptions is nothing short of laughable.

When political correctness became a doctrine, personal judgment became a sin. Subjectivity was consequently stigmatized, and apparently common sense went with it. Ultimately, the citizens of Pierce County should not have to pay for a criminal's cancer treatment, an airline employee should not have to be retrained for allowing a former Vice President to bypass security, and there are very few good reasons for a college kid to have a medical marijuana card.

Northwestern Community Columnist Molly Metzig was born and raised in Oshkosh. Last fall, she left for the University of Oregon, where she is "learning a lot about the ways of the world and the sociopolitical differences between the Midwest and the West Coast." She still reads The Northwestern online and considers herself "a libertarian and a pragmatist."

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