ALBUQUERQUE — CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, is reportedly President-elect Barack Obama’s choice for surgeon general; Gupta, an Atlanta-based neurosurgeon, is said to be interested in the job and he is being vetted now.
“I was hoping for Marcus Welby, but if he’s not available, Dr. Gupta’s pretty good!” says Dr. Alfredo Vigil, New Mexico’s secretary of health, who describes the choice as “pretty cool.”
“First of all, his clinical and academic credentials are solid, and that’s important because not everybody who’s on TV talking about health issues has that. Also, he’s clearly a proven effective communicator and that means a lot. When you have a way to get people’s attention it’s extremely helpful.”
And Dr. Gupta certainly isn’t painful to look at. “Didn’t People Magazine say he was one of the ’sexiest men alive’?” Vigil asks.
(The answer is yes.)
“Anything that will get Americans to look up from their coffee and toast in the morning will help. Surgeon generals over the years have made critical cultural change, from smoking to teen pregnancy and seat belts. These movements were often led by the bully pulpit of the surgeon general,” Vigil says.
The Wall Street Journal speculates that the choice of Gupta indicates that Obama wants to give the job a much higher profile, saying, “In choosing Gupta, the TV star and neurosurgeon, President-elect Barack Obama seems to be reaching back to the era when C. Everett Koop was the straight-talking surgeon general advocating for the public’s health.”
Although surgeons general have not historically had a role in creating health policy, Obama reportedly said that Gupta may have an expanded role. Gupta has already met with Obama’s secretary of heath and human services designate, Tom Daschle. And Gupta has experience in this area — during the Bill Clinton administration, he was a White House fellow who worked for Hillary Clinton on health policy.
“If that’s the case, that’s new ground. The previous surgeon generals have not been invited to the health policy table up to now and that would be very interesting and exciting,” Vigil says.
Basically, the surgeon general serves as the nation’s 10th-grade health class teacher, scolding us about the dangers of smoking and fast food, and encouraging us to eat our vegetables and exercise. And in that role, the choice of Gupta sounds good to Veronica Garcia, New Mexico’s secretary of education.
“I think because of his celebrity status, the fact that he’s written books, been on CNN, people are used to seeing him in the role of an educator, telling people how they can have a healthier lifestyle. … But I hope he’ll focus also on children because they are so vulnerable right now. We’re seeing kids having adult-onset diabetes, hypertension and high cholesterol at 10, 12 years of age. We need a massive public education campaign, because if adults don’t clamor for more money and support for physical and health education, it won’t happen,” Garcia says.
C. Everett Koop and Sanjay Gupta: One of these things is not like the other...
The last surgeon general with a profile this high was C. Everett Koop, who served in the Reagan administration. But Sanjay Gupta is no C. Everett Koop. First and foremost, Reagan’s surgeon general was an evangelical Christian who strongly opposed abortion but also won over critics with independent positions on tobacco and HIV/AIDS, and sex education. While Gupta hasn’t shared many of his personal opinions on TV, the fact that he worked for the very pro-choice Clinton and wants to work for the very pro-choice Obama gives a strong hint.
Women’s health care advocates are pleased with the choice of Gupta, who they say has been critical of last-minute Bush administration rules that could seriously restrict access to women’s health care services. The rules would allow any health care worker to object to providing any service — potentially including providing birth control, fertility treatments or tubal ligations — or even giving information about the availability of those services, for personal moral reasons. (For more on that see here and here.)
In a December CNN story, Gupta weighed in on the rule, saying: “[I]t’s a bit of a slippery slope. I mean, when you say, ‘I’m not going to provide care based on my own conscience’ … you can imagine that opens up a whole wide range of possibilities, in terms of what is going to be treated and what is not.”
Even if Gupta doesn’t play a formal role in health policy, some reproductive health advocates are feeling pretty good about the choice.
“I don’t know enough about him position-wise, but if he’s worked for Hillary Clinton, then I’m thinking he will be at least passively supportive of our agenda, that is, pro-choice, pro-access to birth control,” says Johnny Wilson of Planned Parenthood of New Mexico. “And the administration might want to use the surgeon general position to support a health care reform agenda. That would be good.
“It’s a pretty savvy pick,” Wilson says.
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