Having followed her career years ago as we were volunteering at the DC Armory as the Katrina victems came in and overflowed the place with need, I heard stories about what this amazing woman was doing. I thought then that I wish people like her could have a voice.
And now she will. Now, I do not know about her stances on anything, but I LOVE HER HEART FOR PEOPLE!
Read on about an amazingly giving person!
pd
Surgeon General Once Paid in Oysters Pushed Health Care to All – Bloomberg.com
After Hurricane Katrina, Regina Benjamin took only what her patients could afford to pay: bushels of oysters or lumps of Gulf Coast crab meat. Her Alabama health clinic was destroyed and still she helped, navigating through the mud in a pick-up truck to make house calls.
Katrina’s destruction in 2005 was just the latest challenge to medical care in Bayou La Batre, a rural shrimping village that had fallen on tough economic times, said Mayor Stan Wright, recalling Benjamin’s actions during the storm. The two decades of medical care she supplied to the town’s neediest residents make her an ideal candidate as surgeon general, he said.
President Barack Obama yesterday named Benjamin, 52, as his nominee, saying the family physician would ensure patients have “a voice at the table” as policy makers overhaul the U.S. health-care system. In Bayou La Batre, Benjamin saw first hand the doctor shortages and inefficient care Obama has vowed to end, said David Satcher, a former surgeon general.
“Her life really has been what Obama’s been talking about,” said Satcher, director of The Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Benjamin’s alma mater. “She’s lived the commitment to the underserved. She’s lived the commitment to quality preventive care.”
Satcher taught Benjamin when she attended the medical school, and she stood out even then for her interest in serving the poor, he said in a telephone interview.
Below the Poverty Line
Bayou La Batre’s residents earned $9,928 per capita, less than half the national average, in 2000, the latest year for which U.S. Census figures are available. More than a quarter of residents lived below the poverty line.
Obama, at a White House ceremony yesterday, restated his support for winning passage this year of legislation to cover the estimated 46 million uninsured in the U.S. and rein in medical costs. Benjamin, whose nomination needs Senate approval, will be a crucial voice in the debate, he said.
Benjamin has “seen an increasing number of patients who have had health insurance their entire lives suddenly lose it because they lost their jobs, or because it’s simply become too expensive,” Obama said.
Benjamin said she was dedicated to preventive treatment that would keep more Americans healthy. She cited the deaths of her father from diabetes and high blood pressure, her mother from lung cancer brought on by smoking and her brother from an HIV-related illness.
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