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COVID-19, Current Events, Featured, Op-eds, Politics, What's New

Covid 2022: A New Year, New Fears

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By now, Dr. Fauci’s Covid “fearspeak” has become background noise. Yes, the new “Omicron” variant is making its way around the world. Fortunately, reports from South Africa as well as other studies indicate that Omicron’s illness is milder than Delta. Even Fauci-friendly public health physicians have cautioned that there is “absolutely no reason to panic.”

In 2022, we should panic because opioid overdoses took the lives of 100,000 fellow Americans from April 2020 to April 2021—an increase of 28 percent from the same period the year before. The statistic is appalling but not surprising given the Covid lockdowns coupled with millions of doses of fentanyl and other illicit drugs flooding across a porous border.

We should panic because one in ten Americans has diabetes and one in three Americans has prediabetes. Moreover, 89 percent of the diabetics are overweight (Body Mass Index over 25). Just over 73 percent of the U.S. population are overweight and 42.5 percent are obese (BMI over 30). Worse yet, obesity among adults, age 18 to 25 years increased from 6.2 percent to 32.7 percent over the last 40 years. Instead of Dr. Fauci telling us we have to relinquish our individual choices when it comes to the increasingly ineffective current Covid vaccines, he should emphasize the effect of obesity on Covid outcomes. According to the CDC, about 78 percent of people who have been hospitalized, needed a ventilator or died from Covid-19 have been overweight or obese.

We should fear the loss scientific medical practice, when to avoid being stressed out, patients are demanding informed consent to be weighed in the doctor’s office. Yet curiously, informed consent is not required for experimental mRNA vaccines.

We should fear the blatant abuse of power by our public servants in the name of public health. We should be afraid when our top health bureaucrat, the Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary declared “it is absolutely the government’s business” to know people’s vaccination status.” We should panic when elected representatives jump on the medical privacy-be-damned bandwagon. The House of Representatives handily approved the Immunization Infrastructure Modernization Act of 2021 which would establish yet another government database. This one is an “immunization information system,” that can share every vaccine dose with not only with other governmental but private entities.

We should be afraid when the FDA sends threatening letters to pharmacists, trying to limit the use of a safe drug shown to be 60 percent effective in improving outcomes of Covid. Why? It has side effects such as skin rash, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pain, facial or limb swelling, neurologic adverse events (dizziness, seizures, confusion), sudden drop in blood pressure, severe skin rash potentially requiring hospitalization and liver injury. We’ve seen no such letters regarding molnupiravir, the new kid on the block for Covid treatment that can cause diarrhea, dizziness, headache, hives, itching, skin rash, nausea, redness of skin, vomiting, bone and cartilage damage in children, birth defects, cancer and is only 30 percent effective.

We should panic knowing that pharmaceutical companies spent $266,846,347 lobbying Congress, and the American Medical Association’s top corporate donors are pharmaceutical companies.

We should panic about the federal government establishing guidelines (future regulations?) for news and social media on suppression of health “misinformation.” We should worry that Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook engages in Soviet-style silencing certain political viewpoints.

We should fear social engineering and panic about the media becoming the new form of re-education camps. It’s hard to miss the oohing and aahing over the first transgender person to make it to the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions. Did they fawn over the first male, the first black person, the first white person, the first Asian person? No. BTW, the first Tournament winner was a woman, and a black man won years before women and blacks knew they were inferior, weak-minded oppressed persons. Someone, please come forward and enlighten us as to why a transgender person answering questions on a game show is headline news. Viewed in the most favorable light, perhaps the media were providing welcomed distraction from Dr. Fauci and his smug and smarmy self.

We should fear misguided attempts to stop racism with racism. In the name of social justice, colleges, businesses, medical schools, and K-12 schools have fallen into the trap of promoting Marxist race warfare where students and employees can learn that minorities are permanent victims of the irredeemably racist white people.

We should fear becoming accustomed to a new socially acceptable apartheid: segregation by race, vaccination status, and mask-wearing.

Most of all, we should fear how readily our fellow Americans acquiesced to unreasonable, unscientific demands at the altar of Covid-19.

When it comes to Covid in 2022, opt for prudence, not panic. Eat well, get enough vitamin D, exercise, wash your hands, engage with your friends, cough or sneeze in your elbow, and stay home if you are feeling unwell. If you do get sick, seek medical care immediately.

Live your life. After all, there are 14 more letters after omicron in the Greek alphabet.

Culture & Society, Current Events, Guest Column, Politics, What's New

Remember Rev. Martin Luther King’s Message

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Guest column by Claude

Grocery chain Giant Foods is now labeling foods with price tags that indicate which products are made by companies with non-white owners. This is totally fucked up. How did things get to be this crazy? How much longer before this racism reaches critical mass and blows up?

It’s time for people in those states of all races, genders (male and female and otherwise) to boycott places like this. About 10 days ago a high school friend of mine and I went to lunch at Olive Garden. The African-American waiter asked if we wanted something to drink. I said “a diet soda”. He asked “Diet Coke” and I replied “No, Coca Cola thinks I am too white.” So I ordered water. 

A week later the same friend and I went to the Red Lobster and the waitress asked the same question and I gave the same reply. But she answered “Diet Pepsi” and I said perfect and my friend ordered one too. This is what we have to do. My wife now does very little shopping at Ralphs because they took ‘My Pillow’ out of the store. We have never bought one of those pillows but it was because Kroger Foods, owners of Ralphs, didn’t like Mike Lindell’s 3 hour video on election fraud. 

I don’t buy Nike, I will never buy an I-phone, stopped watching the NBA (I have been a huge Lakers fan since 1965 and I wanted anyone but the Lakers to win in 2020). The point is we need to keep our eyes and ears open and start boycotting these “woke” businesses. We also need to start spreading the word to others. Create a ‘do not buy’ list and hand it out at meetings. 

The civil rights movement of the 1960s was about creating an inclusive society where, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, we judge a person by their character and not the color of their skin. I thought we were making progress toward that and that our society is becoming more and more color blind but that progress started going backward under Obama and now it is going backwards faster than a snowball rolling down hill and like the snowball it is getting bigger all the time. 

We all need to stick together and not shop at these “woke” businesses. We must fight this 21st Century version of segregation and racism. If I see somebody and I call them an asshole it is not because of their skin color but because they are assholes and those come in all makes and colors and nobody has a monopoly on assholes. 

I have friends of all colors except for American Indian and Eskimo? Why? Just because I don’t know any but if I did and they were nice people they would be friends of mine.

Culture & Society, Current Events, Politics, What's New

Thinking Out Loud: Verbal Rubbish

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An anti-Justice Amy Coney Barrett howled at Senator Lindsay Graham, “why would you put a racist on the Court”? It’s understandable that the protester would be upset that Justice Barrett’s personal moral code supports the sanctity of life. But a racist? This just shows how that word no longer has any meaning. It is like calling someone a boogerface or butthead. “Racist” has become a convenient, all-encompassing insult that is difficult to refute. I suppose in keeping with the infantile nature of the insult, one should reply, “I know I am but so are you.”

I’ll show you racism. In the woke do-gooders’ attempt to make black lives matter, they have deemed black folks as inferior and incapable. For example, San Diego schools will no longer count late work attendance or behavior when awarding grades. These “non-academic” factors are now considered racist. What happens when the student who “learns” in a system without discipline has to timely arrive or complete his assignments for his job? When his boss counsels him about his tardiness, will he have been conditioned to scream racism?

And how did President Trump become a Nazi and a racist? His daughter and her family are Jewish. And why would the Ellis Island Honor Society give a racist (alongside Mohammed Ali and Rosa Parks) an award that celebrates “patriotism, tolerance, brotherhood and diversity”? Because he is not a racist. But calling him one relieves the critic of developing a reasoned case abasing him.

Donald Trump has longstanding black friends and black executives in his business organization. As President, he has put forth programs that specifically benefit black Americans. He spearheaded the First Step Act, that included major criminal justice reforms that have reunited thousands of prison inmates with their families through release or reduced sentences. President Trump has increased the amounts of funding to historically black colleges (HCBUs) and supported work study programs in record time. The President’s economic programs have resulted in the highest black and Hispanic employment ever. And for those who think he is not empathetic to welfare: the best welfare program is a job.

Some racist, eh?

COVID-19, Culture & Society, Op-eds, Politics, What's New

Some Black Lives Don’t Matter

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I grew up in a segregated neighborhood where within three months of our Doberman’s death, our house was burglarized 4 times. Thus, a new architectural feature: burglar bars. I can’t imagine my old neighborhood with no police to protect us. Our experience reflected the 2016 and 2019 studies showing no racial bias in police shootings—what Harvard’s Roland G. Fryer Jr. called “the most surprising result of my career.”

Year after year, this Boomer Black woman has seen the country change for the better. It was the ever-present burglar bars that made me appreciate integration all the more. Now I can live in any neighborhood I choose. As Black people moved through an integrated society, negative attitudes changed. While the Great Society’s federal poverty programs helped around the edges, the rules for some programs encouraged mothers to jettison their children’s father from the home. Fatherless children are more likely to be high school drop-outs, thus limiting their opportunities for the future. There must be more to social policy than throwing federal dollars at “the underserved.” Reliance on government money is the road to a permanent low income. This saps the recipient of dignity and the spirit of achievement.

Welfare programs hurt more than they have helped by marrying the recipients to the government. Black Panther Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver said it well: “What we have to do is organize people in free institutions that can put them to work, and then they can draw their living out of our economy, not out of the federal treasury. …If we [create projects] through the state like President Roosevelt did with the New Deal, you augment the power of the state. But if you do it through decentralized structures that are controlled by the people, then we maintain our freedom, within a free institution.”

Black activists complained that cities were run by White men. For years we’ve had Black mayors, chiefs of police, and school superintendents. Sadly, little has changed. As of 2013, only 59 percent of Black males finished high school. High school drop-outs have a 70 percent chance of going to prison. Black folks cannot partake of the opportunities in front of them without a good education. Many times, the worst teachers are shunted to poor neighborhoods with substandard schools. Meanwhile, “progressives” bow down to the unions and oppose school choice, and paradoxically champion the free flow of illegal aliens for cheap labor thus displacing Black high school drop-outs from these unskilled jobs.

Social Justice Warriors and White teenagers from well-heeled neighborhoods seem to think there were no successful Black folks until the SJWs decided to rescue us. My grandfather graduated from a White medical school in 1905. My mother’s “big sister” became a dentist in the 1940s. Repeat: Black female dentist, 1940s.

Oh yes, the SJWs lovingly suggest you read self-flagellating books about how every White person is a racist. Why don’t they ever suggest 1950s tennis trailblazer Althea Gibson’s “I Always Wanted to Be Somebody.” Or “Why Should White Guys have All the Fun” by Reginald Lewis, a poor Black kid who attended college on a scholarship and Harvard Law School, worked his way up in the financial world of leverage buy-outs, and in 1987 bought Beatrice International for $985 million.

Predictably, the SJWs find an excuse for why some Blacks are able to make something out of their lives and are eager to blame faceless White devils for the failures of Black folks. Tell this to a regular guy from Twitter: “I’m a 33 year old Black male and I have NEVER been oppressed. . . I can buy a car, I can buy a home, I can obtain a passport, I can WORK. I love this great country and proud to be an American. . .” Of course, he was labelled with the obligatory Uncle Tom moniker.

Democrats had the presidency, the House, and the Senate for 2 years during Barack Obama’s presidency. It’s curious that there were no mass nationwide protests under Obama’s watch, even with police-involved deaths. Did the civil rights advocates think he was actually doing something for Black people? Was he given a pass because he is Black? Of course, giving Black people a pass is so racist; it implies that Black people are not up to the task. What is going on now is beyond protesting. It is sick, cult-like behavior. White people kneeling in front of Black people professing their brokenness and begging forgiveness. For what? The immutable trait of their skin color? What about the descendants of Black slave owners? If you can find them, they should probably be thrashed. I would have not a scintilla of respect for anyone who knelt before me and apologized for being alive.

Let’s stipulate that some people (both Black and White) are actual racists. Tarring all people with the same brush is a dangerous road to travel and risks the loss of good will. While protesters say they want a conversation about race, why would anyone converse with a disdainful overlord wannabe who has determined that you are lower than a worm’s belly at the outset? This is a recipe for a race war, not peace.

As a physician, I cannot ignore the plain fact that the people who champion social distancing and mask shaming are silent about the current large gatherings of protesters standing shoulder-to-shoulder. This must be one smart virus that can tell the difference between anti-economic lockdown/let me feed my family protesters and Black Lives Matter protesters.

And why do only some Black lives matter? Nineteen persons were killed in Chicago during the last weekend of May as the Black Lives Matter protests rolled on. With its Black superintendent of police and Black mayor, from January 1 to June 1, 2020, Chicago had 236 homicides, 165 of whom were known to be Black. None were killed by the police. Most were under 30 years old. Where are the national television stories and public vigils? Read these names and weep.

Bio: Dr. Singleton is a board-certified anesthesiologist. She is Immediate Past President of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). She graduated from Stanford and earned her MD at UCSF Medical School.  Dr. Singleton completed 2 years of Surgery residency at UCSF, then her Anesthesia residency at Harvard’s Beth Israel Hospital. While still working in the operating room, she attended UC Berkeley Law School, focusing on constitutional law and administrative law.  She interned at the National Health Law Project and practiced insurance and health law. She teaches classes in the recognition of elder abuse and constitutional law for non-lawyers.

Culture & Society, Law, Media & Press, Op-eds, Politics

Russia, Racists, and Ridiculousness

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By Marilyn M. Singleton, MD, JD

Now that the Russia collusion story has lost its glow, the left’s narrative du jour is that anyone expressing a contrary opinion is a racist. It is so exhausting! What is a racist, anyway? A racist believes that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race. Tethering a rival to racism is designed to be a career-ender. Thus, some presidential hopefuls profess embarrassment and remorse because they are Caucasian while others believe themselves to be morally superior because they are not. 

The political pot-stirrers wail that our country is racist, despite the fact that we elected the son of a black African and a white American to be our leader. At about 12 percent of the population, the “black vote” could not have unilaterally pulled this off. Obama captured the white vote even after his pre-election unity speech publicly shamed his beloved white grandmother for her “cringe[worthy]” comments involving racial stereotypes. All to atone for supporting a pastor whose “incendiary language” expressed hatred toward white folks. Because they shifted their political allegiance, the same 2008 Obama voters are now racists.

We have arrived at a place so vitriolic and demented that Ivanka Trump was called a racist because she bought a little white puppy for her child. By that “logic” the Obamas are racist because they bought a pure-bred black dog—and not a shelter dog as they promised to adopt. So of course, they likely harbor ill will against the homeless.

By today’s standard, President Clinton is a racist because his ill-fated Waco tank attack in 1993 killed some 40 ethnic minority persons. And who is the racist? Eric Holder’s Justice Department refused to allow a North Carolina town to hold nonpartisan local elections on the grounds that removing the partisan cue (Democrat) in municipal elections would likely eliminate the single factor that allows black candidates to be elected to office.

Is black filmmaker Spike Lee a racist for making the movie, Chi-raq highlighting Chicago’s violence and black on black murders? Is Baltimore’s black former mayor Catherine Pugh a racist for saying she could smell the dead animals while touring her city’s impoverished neighborhoods? No. They were stating facts that in today’s brave new world white persons are forbidden from uttering. Of course, the light shed on Baltimore inspired many “racists” to help clean up distressed neighborhoods.

And recall the CNN radio host’s stunning response to a black man after he expressed his belief in the merits of responsibility and hard work: “by virtue of being a white male you have white privilege.” Talk about racial stereotyping! How could a black person possibly believe that individuals, not the government, hold the key to success?

Many black workers knew that government is not always their friend. In the 1930s, many referred to Franklin Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration (NRA) as the Negro Removal Act, the Negroes Ruined Again, or Negroes Robbed Again.

The new minimum wage regulations on hiring practices favored the all-white skilled labor unions. Many black workers were unskilled and consequently lost their jobs.

Additionally, the New Deal’s Federal Housing Administration refused to insure mortgages in and near black neighborhoods. Moreover, the FHA subsidized developers who were building whites-only tract homes. But somehow this administration that is advancing opportunity zones to encourage long-term investments in low-income urban and rural communities nationwide is racist.

In a misguided attempt at reparation, the War on Poverty drove children’s fathers out of the home as a condition of financial assistance. Elite colleges admitted unprepared black students with lower SAT scores and GPAs, resulting in a mere 38 percent graduation rate. Worse yet, some of these colleges have blacks-only dormitories. Since when is exclusion and segregation preferable to inclusivity and integration that we so strenuously fought for?

What happened to “why can’t we just all get along?” Jettisoned. The panderers who want to fundamentally transform America need miserable people to swallow their baloney. In truth, most of us do get along. People from California to Mississippi are socializing and working together and marrying each other at a steadily increasing rate. One-in-six U.S. newlyweds were married to a person of a different race or ethnicity in 2015, a fivefold increase since 1967.

Today, given his views on self-determination, the runaway slave Frederick Douglass would be ejected from the tribe. “What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice.… What shall we do with the Negro?… Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played mischief with us.… All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs!”

And to those who tar their opponents as racists: if it weren’t for double standards you would have no standards at all.

Bio: Dr. Singleton is a board-certified anesthesiologist. She is President of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). She graduated from Stanford and earned her MD at UCSF Medical School.  Dr. Singleton completed 2 years of Surgery residency at UCSF, then her Anesthesia residency at Harvard’s Beth Israel Hospital. While still working in the operating room, she attended UC Berkeley Law School, focusing on constitutional law and administrative law.  She interned at the National Health Law Project and practiced insurance and health law. She teaches classes in the recognition of elder abuse and constitutional law for non-lawyers. 

Culture & Society, Elections, Law, Medicine, Op-eds, Politics

The Real Loser in the Midterms: Individuality

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by Marilyn M. Singleton, MD, JD

After the election, sappy statements on social media exhort us to bow down in praise that the first minority this or the first woman that was elected and how this means we have catapulted our nation out of the Neanderthal era. Funny how no one mentions Young Kim’s victory – but she is not a Democrat so it does not count. It’s funny how no one cheered women of color when Condoleeza Rice was secretary of state. Instead she was called an Aunt Jemima and a house nigga’ in a nationally syndicated cartoon.

Now it is acceptable to call young conservative black students enjoying their visit with President Trump “N-words in Maggot hats” and ridicule them as “props.”  What racist insults! Undoubtedly, the prominently positioned little black boy at the Affordable Care Act signing just happened to be strolling outside the White House East Room.

These “first” types would rather we forget that we had a black Senator from Mississippi, Hiram Revels in 1870. Or that by 1920 the first black female millionaire, Madame C.J. Walker employed up to 40,000 women and lived in the same neighborhood as John D. Rockefeller.

Yes, the road to acceptance was long and paved by female businesspersons, physicists, pilots, and physicians, among many others. The road is littered with boorish people and men who targeted women for abuse.

There was a time when minorities and women advanced because they were accomplished, assertive, and strong. When Madame Walker was denied a speaking slot at the National Negro Business League convention, she admonished, “Surely you are not going to shut the door in my face. I am a woman that came from the cotton fields of the South.” The next year, she was the keynote speaker. Although only 10 percent of my medical school classmates were women (and a handful of minorities, including myself), the top two students were women. Sure it was a slog, but competence won the day.

Then something politically expedient happened. We lost the grit and pluck that propelled Madame Walker to success. Women became victims who feel they are always being stepped on by others, ignored or abused. And only women could rescue them from their evil white male oppressors. Now being a minority or a woman has become a shield against legitimate criticisms, setting back the struggle to simply be judged by the content of our character. One wonders how the press would report the botched Broward County ballots if Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes were a white male.

Sadly, the focus on victimization has expanded to all Americans. The key to getting votes was to let people know how miserably unfair their lives are. Just like in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the beleaguered seek to improve their lot through rigid exclusionary rules: “Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.” The newly minted pathetic wretches are exhorted to join the morally superior tribe who will protect them from those who disagree with their point of view. After all, they are likely racist sexist homophobes.

The “longshoreman philosopher” Eric Hoffer pointed out in his classic, The True Believer, “people whose lives are barren and insecure seem to show a greater willingness to obey than people who are self-sufficient and self-confident.” Such persons tend to value equality and fraternity more than freedom. Such persons will also more readily accept in their medical care government control, rationing, and paint-by-the numbers treatments (or non-treatments).

Before getting excited about the midterm election results, chew on this. Lying during a political campaign is protected by the First Amendment. Animal Farm’s core commandment, “All animals are equal” devolved into “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Analyze why the uber-rich with $42 million private jets financed the campaigns of the socialist-leaning candidates. Are they thinking, I’ve made it to the top thanks to the capitalistic system of hard work and rewards, but you can take the crumbs and sit on your lazy butts watching me pontificate on TV? How will the Bernie Bros and Single-payer sisters who voted to expand government health insurance with their $1000 iPhones feel when their toys are taxed out of existence? And our modern-day feminists who define themselves by their gender rather than competence have no right to be insulted if a patient says, “I prefer not to have a woman doctor.”

My congratulations go to all the women and men — voters and candidates — who are independent critical thinkers, who display the grit of Madame C.J. Walker, and who follow the words of the abolitionist, William Ellery Channing: “No power in society, no hardship in your condition can depress you, keep you down, in knowledge, power, virtue, influence but your own consent.”

Dr. Marilyn M. Singleton, MD, JD is a board-certified anesthesiologist and member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS).

Dr. Marilyn Singleton ran for Congress in California’s 13th District in 2012, fighting to give its 700,000 citizens the right to control their own lives.

While still working in the operating room, Dr. Marilyn Singleton attended UC Berkeley Law School, focusing on constitutional law and administrative law. She also interned at the National Health Law Program and has practiced both insurance and health law.

Dr. Marilyn Singleton has taught specialized classes dealing with issues such as the recognition of elder abuse and constitutional law for non-lawyers. She also speaks out about her concerns with Obamacare, the apology law and death panels.

Congressional candidate Dr. Marilyn Singleton presented her views on challenging the political elite to physicians at the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons annual meeting in 2012.

Follow Dr. Marilyn Singleton on Twitter @MSingletonMDJD

More info about Dr. Marilyn Singleton

Culture & Society, Healthcare Reform, Law, Medicine, Op-eds, Politics

There’s More To Black History Than Slavery

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By Marilyn M. Singleton, M.D., J.D

Black history month is a time to celebrate Americans whose accomplishments are sometimes overshadowed by the eye-catching negative news stories.

It was discomfiting to watch the State of the Union address while black congresspersons churlishly sat with their arms crossed even as President Trump announced that black unemployment was at its lowest recorded rate. This sort of behavior does nothing except promote the notion that rudeness and incivility is accepted congressional protocol.

The employment news could have been a great segue into Black History Month. These “resisters” could have transformed a statistic into an opportunity to let their unquestionably loyal constituents know that ordinary black people can rise to the top. 

Black leaders should help dispel the myth that the only money in the black community is in the hands of sports figures and entertainers. Maybe they should read Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun?, the autobiography of Reginald Lewis. Lewis attended college on a scholarship and Harvard Law School, worked his way up in the financial world of leverage buy-outs and in 1987 bought Beatrice International for $985 million. Renamed TLC Beatrice, this snack food, beverage, and grocery store conglomerate was the largest black-owned and managed business in the U.S. Lewis’s philanthropy built the Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture. The first major facility at Harvard named in honor of an African-American was the Reginald F. Lewis International Law Center.

Instead of stirring the racial and gender identity victimization pot, black leaders should display the qualities that we would want to develop in our children. Take persistence in achieving one’s aspirations, exemplified by Bessie Coleman. She was the daughter of sharecroppers who became the first black American female pilot and the first black American to have an international pilot license. Denied admission to American flight schools because she was black and refused private training because she was a woman, Ms. Coleman was undeterred. She learned French and in 1921 went to a Paris flight school. She first appeared in an American air show in 1923 at an event honoring veterans of the all-black 369th Infantry Regiment of World War I. Before she could fulfill her dream of starting a flying school, she died in 1926 while practicing for an air show. Lieutenant William J. Powell, a decorated World War I veteran, wrote, “Because of Bessie Coleman, we have overcome that which was worse than racial barriers. We have overcome the barriers within ourselves and dared to dream.”

Congresspersons, tell your constituents that prior to the Reconstruction there were black legislators, such as Matthias de Souza of the Colonial Maryland Legislature, 1641-1642 and Alexander Twilight of the Vermont Legislature, 1836-1837. And as early as 1783 an ex-slave, James Derham, could become a skilled and respected physician with a successful practice, treating both black and white patients.

None of these successes denies the reality of social and health issues affecting the poor and some ethnic minorities. Despite the Affordable Care Act (ACA), non-elderly black Americans, among others remain significantly more likely than whites to be uninsured. Disturbingly, a degree of fear and distrust of medical care exists in some black Americans. A public hospital focus-group study found several contributing factors, including an expectation of racism. In today’s climate where some black leaders imply that white Americans are racists, only personal experiences can slay that fire-breathing dragon.

Another determinant was fear of experimentation noting the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study. Only a deep, detailed discussion about treatment choices can allay such fears. This is impossible in a 7-minute visit. Additionally, offices’ requests for insurance information made patients feel like money was the prime concern. This perception could be invalidated by instituting government policies that encourage medical care on a charitable basis—something physicians have happily done since the days of Hippocrates.

The key factor engendering distrust was poor “interpersonal competence,” with participants complaining, “physicians barely spoke to them, did not examine them, and immediately took out a prescription pad.” Sadly, this is becoming the norm for all patients—black and white. The way to rid the health system of disparities is not give everyone the same level of robotic treatment. We physicians can contribute our time and use every patient encounter to let patients know they will be treated with respect and dignity.

And as for our ornery congressional “resisters,” they should rent the film, Remember the Titans, take its message of receptivity and cooperation to heart, uncross their arms, roll up their sleeves, and join the winning team.

Dr. Marilyn M. Singleton, MD, JD is a board-certified anesthesiologist and member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS).

Dr. Marilyn Singleton ran for Congress in California’s 13th District in 2012, fighting to give its 700,000 citizens the right to control their own lives.

While still working in the operating room, Dr. Marilyn Singleton attended UC Berkeley Law School, focusing on constitutional law and administrative law. She also interned at the National Health Law Program and has practiced both insurance and health law.

Dr. Marilyn Singleton has taught specialized classes dealing with issues such as the recognition of elder abuse and constitutional law for non-lawyers. She also speaks out about her concerns with Obamacare, the apology law and death panels.

Congressional candidate Dr. Marilyn Singleton presented her views on challenging the political elite to physicians at the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons annual meeting in 2012.

Follow Dr. Marilyn Singleton on Twitter @MSingletonMDJD

More info about Dr. Marilyn Singleton

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