Was listening to morning edition this morning, and you really have to hear about her to realize what an amazing person she is. I really don’t know where people like this come from, but this country manages to produce a lot of people like this. Not nearly enough, but still, a good number.
Plus, Bayou La Batre ftw. Bubba Gump would be proud.
Punchy
Joycelyn Elders Redux.
Michael D.
I heard the news on NPR as well. This is a great pick. It should be clear that a wise African-American woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better medical conclusion than a white male.
The Grand Panjandrum
I too am on a couple of wing nut mailing lists and one of them is from a rabid anti-abortion group. The nominee is on the list of pro-choice MD’s they hate. So after reading her bio and looking at her credentials I’d say Obama hit a homerun with this choice. I wasn’t nearly as impressed with the Sanjay Gupta choice. although it was a clever one.
PhoenixRising
Oh, is she pro-choice?
I assumed from the timing of the announcement and lack of detail about her personal life that she was gay as a goose, but ‘refers out or (gasp!) performs medical abortion as part of a range of health care for women of reproductive age’ is just as good.
cleek
is she the one who wants doctors to work for free?
/Rush
Montysano
Since our last Alabama-girl-made-good, Condi Rice, didn’t work out so well, I’ve got high hopes this time around.
Bayou La Batre in the house!
kid bitzer
props to michael d. for a good snort.
thing is, though, that medical decisions really are *not* color-blind.
even if you think there is no legal context in which the race of the people before the court should matter, there are a bunch of medical issues where race is a key factor in making the right diagnosis.
and, yeah, that’s usually the race of the patient, rather than the race of the m.d., but at the same time, if the doctor knows the issues, then they may be better prepared to look for them.
ah well, no point spoiling a good joke by being pedantic.
Keith
If it helps raise awareness that Bayou La Batre is *not* in Louisiana, I’m all for it!
Da Bomb
I have read about her in the past. She is pretty amazing. She’s an example of how doctors should operate in this country. Unfortunately there are not enough.
Brett
Agreed, John. Seems like a great pick.
spavis
good write-up on jezebel. ditto the above comments. health care needs a strong advocate to lead the charge.
inkadu
This is really no fun until the right wing starts to attack her.
Good politics is just so boring without the crazy.
gnomedad
@cleek:
This was discussed yesterday; I am used to vile stuff from Rush, but this is vile squared. Here is a doctor using individual initiative and private funding to help disaster victims, which “conservatives” are supposed to think is just awesome, and that makes her a DFH socialmalist to Rush. And the dittoheads will lap it right up. As J. D. Rhoades said yesterday
Just disgusting.
Brick Oven Bill
Surgeon General Pick is morbidly obese. This is not a good example for the youth. She might be nice, but it is best that we keep this lady on the radio.
ricky
Too bad Forrest Obama could not pronounce it.
Bob
“..I really don’t know where people like this come from, but this country manages to produce a lot of people like this. ”
And how does the Obama administration find them?
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
From the aforementioned Jezebel article:
Well, it’s not from her sitting on her ass, taking kickbacks from drug companies and waiting for patients to walk into her cushy, air conditioned office.
So she sounds perfect to me, and you sound like a wanker yet again, BoB.
iluvsummr
Some more info on Regina Benjamin here.
anonevent
@Bob: The took GWB’s list, and and did a delta against the population.
ruemara
re: race and medicine. I once spent a fruitless 2 years on medication being suspiciously looked at by my practitioner as ever increasing dosages failed to lower my bp. My ob/gyn looked at my chart 1 day as we were preparing for surgery to check my medicines. She looked at me quizzically while reading it and ventured a query on whether the medicine was working for me. It came out that her residency was in a high urban (some weird term for black) population area, versus our high latino population area and the medication they’d been treating me with doesn’t work for black folk. Moral of this story is–>if anyone of the attendants, residents, supervising physicians or nurse practitioners who’d been annoying me and messing up my body with useless meds had been black, they could have made a wise black person decision by sheer virtue of knowing the medication was a waste of time.
And if there are any more Regina Benjamins out there, would they please move here?
iluvsummr
@Brick Oven Bill: If the strongest objection the right wing can come up with is: “… but, but it’s black, female and fat. Waaah!” (which is all I’ve seen so far), I think she’ll be speedily confirmed as surgeon general.
I have to say I’m quite disappointed. I expected you to go with the godless communist angle, since she often works for no pay. Or to call for deportation of her patients, since many are south east asian immigrants. Please elevate your game.
Anne Laurie
True dat. A nephrologist once told me that a particular antibiotic might not work as well for a young woman like me as it did for “normal people” — i.e., middle-aged white men. I hope that some 25 years later, the Men in White have at least learned to phrase their prejudices less bluntly. But we’re not going to get a health-care system that works for ALL of us “not-normal” people until many, many more Regina Benjamins have the chance to make themselves heard, so good choice, President Obama!
Also, because it cannot be said often enough — Rush Limbaugh has a lot of nerve complaining about other peoples’ weight.
Mnemosyne
@Punchy:
Still the stupidest forced resignation ever. “OMG! She told high schoolers that sometimes people touch themselves in dirty ways without telling them they’re going to pollute their bodies, grow hair on their palms, and make Baby Jesus cry! Burn the witch!”
steve s
Based on what I’ve read today, Regina Benjamin seems like the kind of person we should all strive to be like.
KS in MA
I read in the NYT (or did I hear it on NPR?) that Benjamin went to medical school on a scholarship from the National Health Service Corps (part of HHS), which pays part or full tuition in return for 2 to 4 years’ service in a rural area that has no doctor. Their web site says they accept something like 80 people a year, half of whom end up staying in the communities where they’ve been assigned. That sounds like a fabulous program that should be doubled or tripled in size.
hells littlest angel
Will conservatives be stupid enough to try to trash her character?
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Yes.
Jay B.
These are the small victories one has as a Democrat. Very good and cool people getting nominated for things they are very qualified for for good reasons.
And then there are the Democratic Senators. And all that is good turns into shit.
Jackie
@KS in MA: It was a much larger program that directed people to both urban and rural underserved areas St. Ronnie gutted it after trying to force everyone already signed up into uniform. It was one of the ways for people interested in the lower paying specialties to avoid crushing medical school debt.
The stuff republicans ruin ripple into the future for a long time.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne: Somehow, I can easily see Regina Benjamin providing the same kind of information that Joycelyn Elders did. What I can’t see is Obama doing what Clinton did by capitulating to the horrified right-wing pearl-clutching rants and firing her.
MBSS
la batre had the greatest accent. i like how he said she would work for shellfish or other barter.
hamletta
@MBSS: That was the mayor of Bayou La Batre. Didn’t catch his name. But his accent is beautiful, and it illustrates how great an actor Forest Whitaker is. Accents are hard to do; you really have to have a gift.
Dr. Benjamin sounds like God’s gift to our beleaguered health care system. Years ago, I wrote a story about a photography/poetry exhibit about pre-natal care. and there was one doctor who had gone to med school in Mexico and served a rural population there where she was paid in chickens.
After coming back to the US and dealing with insurance companies, she was ready to go back; she didn’t care about money, she just wanted to be able to take care of her patients, and she’d gladly take more chickens.