1,000 Posts to Applaud Howard Dean

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11. Describing his time as a doctor and how it influeced his view on health care in America.

Governor Howard Dean, M.D.'s Health Care Plan for America
Columbia University, New York City, May 13, 2003

Excerpt (not subject to copyright):

I decided there was nothing more significant I could possibly do to help others than to become a physician.

Following my classes here at Columbia, I attended Albert Einstein School of Medicine in the Bronx.

And then, after my residency at the University of Vermont Medical Center, I joined a medical practice, and later was joined by an exceptional physician named Judith Steinberg who, I should add, is also my wife. In addition to my practice, I volunteered at the community health center in Burlington providing care to people who had no insurance.

That was in the early 80s.

Many of you will remember that it was a time of tremendous economic upheaval -- not unlike today.

Americans were suffering through a recession and Judy and I saw first hand the impact on Vermonters.

The patients we saw were often young parents who'd been laid off from their jobs.

Many of them had lost their health benefits. Drawing down savings just to pay their mortgages or their rent, they simply couldn't afford the cost of seeing a doctor.

Kids with strep, who should have been properly diagnosed and properly treated, were instead being given Tylenol by parents who gambled that it was only the flu... all because they could not afford to take their son or daughter to the doctor.

There were some patients we saw who might have never gotten ill to begin with had they received preventive care.

There were plenty of patients who came to my office who couldn't pay and, as best we could, we never turned away anyone who needed help.

But I understood that the real problem wasn't that there were too few physicians who were donating their services; it was that there were too many families going without the basic health care coverage they needed.

http://www.crocuta.net/Dean/Transcript_of_Health_Care_Plan_May13_2003.htm