After seeing KO tonight, I feel better about the Gupta pick...

[polichick]

Keith's guest (Ezra Klein of The American Prospect) mentioned something that makes sense.

The Obama team didn't want to make the same mistakes the Clinton people did re healthcare reform, failing to sell it to Congress and to the public. So we have a former Majority Leader to deal with Congress and a TV doc whose job has been to explain medical things to the public.

I can see how that might work.


Edited to add guest's name ~ thanks to NYCGirl

[Uzybone]

1. Sorry, there is nothing good that can come of it

Obama is totally out of his league. He has to pick the people the corrupted politicians, blogosphere and media talking heads think he should pick.


:sarcasm:

[provis99]

2. since Gupta is opposed to healthcare reform,

how does that help us? Obama fucked up royally on this idiotic choice.

[polichick]

6. Maybe the purpose is twofold - hire someone who knows how to...

...talk to the public AND make sure he's working for you instead of against you.

[cpamomfromtexas]

19. I hope you're right

[merh]

29. ding, ding, ding

[onefreespiritedchick]

32. Exactly!!! n/t

[Hanse]

13. Have any real evidence that Gupta is opposed to healthcare reform?

Keep in mind- butting heads with Michael Moore does not mean he is diametrically opposed to healthcare reform.

[Freddie Stubbs]

17. He is opposed to any healthcare reform, or just Cuban-style healthcare reform?

:shrug:

[Solon]

21. Define "cuban-style" I'm going to be very interested to hear this one. n/t

[moc]

24. The Cuban health care system is very interesting in its structure. Very neighborhood based.

Individual doctors are set up in neighborhood clinics and they're responsible for the health of all the people in their neighborhood catchment area.

That's just part of it. You can read more in the book "Mountains Beyond Mountains" which is about Paul Farmer. He worked more in Haiti, but the book talks alot about Cuba as a contrast to Haiti in terms of how a relatively poor country can provide pretty good healthcare.

I know some providers (non-American) who criticize Cuba's system for being very autocratic in terms of how it treats physicians, but it's interesting they have better population health indicators in some areas (like infant mortality rates) compared to the U.S. yet have much less in terms of financial resources.

[Solon]

27. Actually, I already knew about that, the poster responding above is just using...

the term "cuban-style" to try to scare people away from their definition of an "leftist extreme position" which this poster hates with a passion, regardless as to whether the position in question is extreme or not.

[David__77]

25. Who is proposing such a reform?

I don't know of it. An odd "question," indeed.

[NYCGirl]

3. Ezra Klein from the American Prospect

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein

[polichick]

7. That's him - thanks!

[Pirate Smile]

4. It would be nice if people wouldn't assume Obama is an idiot and a jackass.

I think it would be a safe assumption most people would have already figured out by now.

How about Democrats try giving Obama the benefit of the doubt instead of always jumping to the worst conclusion.

Kudos to you for admitting that maybe it wasn't an idiotic idea. :thumbsup:

[polichick]

14. I don't think people assume Obama is an idiot or a jackass...

We'd have nothing to talk about if everyone agreed with every choice. I still don't feel better about the Warren choice and I don't like what Gupta did re Michael Moore, but I'm glad the choice makes some sense.

[Captain Hilts]

5. Gupta opposes most healthcare reforms. nt

[polichick]

8. Please see post #6

[NYCGirl]

10. Well, if that's the case, he'll get fired pretty fast, won't he? He's there to sell

THE ADMINISTRATION'S IDEAS.

[Thrill]

23. Yeah because Obama is going to hire someone who is against his healthcare program

Damn what the hell happened to DU?

[moc]

9. Ezra Klein came across as a wet-behind the ears kid just making shit up because he thinks

it sounds good. Just because some "expert" commentator says something cuz he thinks it sounds good doesn't mean he knows what he is talking about.

I don't have a problem with Gupta's media image. Maybe it will be a benefit. Who knows. However, I really really want an SG who knows what public health is all about, who cares about public health, and who thinks public health is an important thing to promote. Given Michelle Obama's former position as former vice president for community affairs at the UofC hospital system (I heard her speak at a public health oriented conference) and because of PE Obama's roots in community empowerment work, I was hopeful that he would have a fundamental appreciation for what public health is all about. Maybe he does, and Gupta will just be his front man. However, I would have preferred the SG himself to be someone who *got it* with regards to public health.

[Captain Hilts]

11. I live about a mile from NIH and Bethesda Naval. Both are filled with folks who do healthcare -

policy.

If you want to talk about research projects, NIH is a good source for folks. If you want to talk about healthcare for large numbers of folks, then Bethesda Naval or Walter Reed can supply some folks.

[NYCGirl]

12. You might want to read this:

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=why_2009_is_the_year_for_universal_health_care

[moc]

16. Doesn't change my opinion. Public health is more than universal health care.

Klein kept talking about healthcare policy and never once mentioned the word "public health". Like I said, he's no expert in judging what makes a good Surgeon General.

[Pirate Smile]

15. Did you see this little tidbit about one of Obama's best friends -

"Dr. Whitaker founded a South Side medical clinic with a barbershop that offered free haircuts to lure black men to get health care;"

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/us/politics/14friends.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2

[moc]

18. A very nice public health approach, so surely Obama is aware.

IIRC, Whitaker is an "inner circle" close friend, right? So, maybe he's the "shadow" SG, and Gupta will be the window dressing? ;-) I can dig that.

One of my colleagues pilot tested using local barbers as interventionists to reduce uncontrolled hypertension in African American men. Pilot results were significant, so now they're doing a larger scale trial.

[Pirate Smile]

20. Extremely inner circle. It is one of the families he always vacations with and one of the

three friends who tried to always have one of them with Obama during the campaign.

Here is an article focused just on him:

Whitaker tries to avoid Obama spotlight

During the grueling presidential campaign, he was a crucial link in a sort of traveling circle of sanity for Barack Obama — a group of Chicago friends who offered counsel and camaraderie on the trail. He just spent the past week by Obama’s side in Hawaii. And there are indications his influence in Obama World will be at least as significant when the president-elect takes office Jan. 20.

He is Dr. Eric Whitaker, an urban health care pioneer and self-described “country doc” who goes back more than 15 years with Obama, and whose personal and professional life is closely interwoven with the 44th president’s.
Since Obama’s victory, Whitaker has hit the links, the gym, the basketball court, the beach and the zoo with the president-elect.

-snip-
But don’t expect Whitaker, a 43-year old who lives with his wife, a cardiologist, and their two young children near the Obamas in Chicago, to follow his pal to Washington.

Whitaker has tamped down rumors he might become Obama’s surgeon general or director of the Centers for Disease Control.
Still, Whitaker’s ideas likely will be reflected in Obama’s health care plans, which makes sense given that Obama once recommended Whitaker as director of the Illinois Department of Public Health.

After leaving the department for the University of Chicago hospital in 2007, Whitaker expanded an effort — first pushed by Michelle Obama — to steer uninsured patients with non-life-threatening conditions from the hospital’s emergency room to local clinics. Expanding health clinics in poor neighborhoods is almost certain to be part of Obama’s plan.

“Eric helped to explain some things about community medicine to Barack, and Barack’s thinking about health care was certainly fashioned by Eric’s leanings towards public health issues,” said Dr. William McDade, an anesthesiologist and associate professor at the University of Chicago’s medical center, who roomed with Whitaker while the two attended the university’s med school.

-snip-
He did, however, write back to explain that — though he is from Chicago’s South Side — he nonetheless considers himself a “country doc” because that “harkens back to a time when physicians were attached to a given community, participated in its institutions and knew the families of patients. An old-style approach to medicine. This is how I approached my work on Chicago's South Side.”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1208/16976.html

[moc]

22. That's very good to hear. Thanks for posting. I didn't have time to

click through your NYT link (I've got a training grant due Friday - a training grant specifically related to increasing the public health workforce, ironically enough :-) so I'm supposed to be working on that.)

Thanks for taking the time. It does make me feel a little better about Gupta if it's clear that Obama "gets" public health.

[Pirate Smile]

26. You're welcome. I think Obama "gets it" and has quite a few people around him that have

worked on the issue.

I'm always glad to help anyone feel better. :)

[pinto]

28. I work in Public Health and see your point about "getting" what PH is about.

One of our Health Officers repeatedly had to remind folks that in Public Health, the patient isn't an individual, per se - as in a primary care doctor / patient relationship - the patient is the community at large. And that Public Health is the interface between the public at large and those health care concerns that effect the community.

He was an effective spokesmen for us, both to the public and to the local powers that be. He bridged that gap, not as a doctor but as a communicator.

Public Health's changed a lot in the 20 years I've been involved. We need more advocacy, not less. And we realize that advocacy entails some new approaches.

While Dr. Gupta's appointment seems an odd choice, at first take, if he serves as an effective spokesman - the front man as you mention - for White House health care reform policies, I think he'll work out well.

Our advocacy, I believe, is best geared toward those policies that get developed in Obama's administration and the new Congress.

[Bluenorthwest]

31. If you look at the role Koop played

during the Reagan years, pushing the administration to at least acknowlege the existance of the AIDS crisis, after long years of official silence, and the importance of Koop's first report on the disease, it becomes clear that it is at least possible for the SG to be far more than a front man or spokesman. If Koop had been a lesser man, I hate to thing what the results would be.
This is an actual job that actually has the potential to do great good. Filling the gig by calling AFTRA for a spokesman is possibly a great waste. Pretending the job is the same as being on the View is disingenous. A public health policy expert would be nice. The right person can save lives.

[lamp_shade]

30. Obama didn't pick a name out of a hat. You can be sure of that. n/t