TW: I suspect you have not spent much time worrying about our next Surgeon General. Obama has one aborted nominee with Sanjay Gupta who was notorious only for being visible on CNN and then backing out. But the bio on Obama's new nominee is pretty impressive so I thought her worthy of a mention. A Southerner and not an Ivy Leaguer no less, in other words the type certain populist governors from small petro-states should embrace (but of course would not).
From Washington Monthly:
"President Obama introduced Dr. Regina Benjamin yesterday as his choice to be the new Surgeon General.
...Slate's Christopher Beam said the debate thus far comes down to whether Benjamin is "fantastic or, as some dissenters claim, merely marvelous."
Benjamin studied at Morehouse and the Alabama School of Medicine; started a family practice in a fishing village called Bayou la Batre, Ala.; got her MBA at Tulane; and converted her practice to a medical clinic for the poor. Those who couldn't pay, she treated for free. After Hurricanes George and Katrina twice destroyed the clinic, she went into debt to rebuild it. Along the way, she was named one of Time's "50 Future Leaders Age 40 and Under" and won a MacArthur "genius" grant.
...Benjamin "has seen in a very personal way what is broken about our health care system," Obama said. Besides treating poor Americans in rural areas for years, she is a poster child for prevention. "My father died with diabetes and hypertension," she said. "My older brother, and only sibling, died at age 44 of HIV-related illness. My mother died of lung cancer, because as a young girl, she wanted to smoke just like her twin brother could." If Regina Benjamin did not already exist, Barack Obama would have invented her.
...Elise Foley noted that the physician's background has a certain political salience: "...Benjamin has something [Sanjay Gupta] doesn't: a record of working with the poor and uninsured. Not coincidentally, these are among the people whom Obama's health care reform plans will help the most.... It's no coincidence that Obama spent the first half of his press conference reaffirming his commitment to passing health care reform legislation, then moved on to discussing an appointee who worked with the same types of people his plans are meant to protect. At a time when the uninsured are so important a part of the health care debate, it seems fitting that Obama would take the appointment of the surgeon general to remind us why."
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