PNHP note: The following text consists of two parts: (1) a news release from the Society of General Internal Medicine, and (2) the remarks of Dr. Oliver Fein, past president of Physicians for a National Health Program, upon receiving the award.
Calkins Award Announcement
Oliver Fein, M.D., professor of clinical medicine and clinical public health at the Weill Cornell Medical College, received the David R. Calkins Award in Health Policy Advocacy at the 36th Annual Meeting of the Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM) on April 26 in Denver.
Dr. Fein was honored for his “extraordinary commitment in health policy advocacy.”
During the 1990s, Dr. Fein founded the Health Reform Cluster of SGIM’s Health Policy Committee, which he subsequently chaired. In 1993-94, he served as a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy fellow in the congressional office of Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, where he championed issues related to primary care training. In 2008, he received the Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellowship Alumni Award for Excellence in Promoting and Advancing Health Policy, a Lifetime Achievement Award.
In 2009, as president of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), Dr. Fein attended the White House Health Care Summit, where he advocated for single-payer national health care reform.
At Weill Cornell, he is co-director of the David Rogers Health Policy Colloquium, a weekly forum for the discussion of health policy issues and directs a two-week course for internal medicine residents titled “Perspectives on the Changing Health Care System.”
At the SGIM meeting, Dr. Fein’s acceptance speech was followed by a standing ovation.
*****
Remarks upon receiving the Calkins Award
By Oliver Fein, M.D., F.A.C.P.
Wow, this is so exciting and completely unexpected.
Exciting, because it is a thrill to be recognized for doing valuable work by one’s peers.
Unexpected, because I thought some members of SGIM might not agree with aspects of my advocacy. For example:
• My passing out leaflets at the 2008 SGIM Annual meeting questioning the keynote invitation to Gail Wilensky, an economist who favors Paul Ryan’s premium support proposal to privatize Medicare by converting it into a defined contribution program.
• My efforts at the 2011 SGIM Annual meeting to organize a “white coat” demonstration attended by over 300 SGIMers at the Arizona Statehouse to protest Arizona’s anti-immigrant legislation.
• My persistent attempt to get SGIM to support single-payer national health care reform.
In 1992, anticipating the Clinton presidency, SGIM’s Health Policy Committee distributed a questionnaire on health care reform. Fifty-eight percent of SGIMers responded and over 80 percent supported universal access to health care.
In 2003-4, we repeated the questionnaire, but only got a 26 percent response rate, still with overwhelming support for universal access.
Finally, in 2009, with the election of Barack Obama, the SGIM Council adopted a statement favoring “access to affordable, comprehensive, equitable health care for all residents of the United States.” But it still didn’t include a call for single payer.
And here we are, in 2013, SGIM honors me with the David Calkins Award for health policy advocacy … in part because of my advocacy for single-payer health care reform.
What are the lessons I hope you take away from this experience:
• SGIM is a dynamic organization. SGIM not only tolerates dissent within its ranks, it rewards it!
• Advocacy for social justice issues generates respect from your peers.
• Don’t give up on single-payer Medicare-for-All. It places a priority on access to health care, can be financed fairly, and has the greatest potential to control costs. Keep the vision alive!
I have so many people to thank for this honor: First my four brothers and our immigrant parents, who in spite of being small-business Republicans, taught me social justice – to respect and value every human being equally.
Second, I thank my partner and wife of 49 years, Charlotte Phillips, and our two daughters, Kim and Jess and granddaughter Clara, for their ongoing support.
And third, I want to thank all those people, some of whom are in this room, who have supported me throughout my career: during residency at Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx; at Columbia-Presbyterian where we tried to make the academic health center socially accountable to the community; and at Cornell, where we have tried to diversify the clinical education of our students by getting them off the island of Manhattan (particularly the Upper East Side) into the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn, and subsequently off the continent of North America to Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe. Special thanks to SGIM members who served and still serve on the Health Policy Committee. I could not have done all these things without all of you. This award is your award.
I love this quote from Martin Luther King: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
And I love this paraphrase: “The arc of history is long, but it bends toward universal access to single-payer health care.”
Perhaps access to health care will become the civil rights movement of the 21st century.