(photo credit of webMD.com)Dr. Regina Benjamin is known along Alabama's Gulf Coast as a country doctor who makes house calls and doesn't turn away patients who can't pay. She also made headlines with her fierce determination to rebuild her nonprofit medical clinic in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
"For all the tremendous obstacles that she has overcome, Regina Benjamin also represents what's best about health care in America, doctors and nurses who give and care and sacrifice for the sake of their patients," Obama said Monday in introducing his choice for a job known as America's doctor.
He said Benjamin will bring insight as his administration struggles to revamp the health care system.
Working as a doctor in a diverse population that includes immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, as well as many residents lacking health insurance, makes her well qualified for the post of surgeon general, says Georges Benjamin, MD, executive director of the American Public Health Association (no relation to Regina Benjamin).
Benjamin called the job "a physician's dream," and pledged to be a voice for patients in need — and to fight the preventable diseases that claim too many lives each year.
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