Oh graduating Harvard medical students, I’m sorry. Your accomplishments are being overshadowed by the emperor with a starched white coat, but no clothes. Yes, Thursday is not your big day of graduation, “It’s a big day for Dr. Murthy and the DFA movement”, says Alice Chen of Doctors for Obama/Doctors for America.
Who is Dr. Vivek Murthy you ask? Other than the 36 year old founder of Doctors for Obama (now known as Doctors for America), he’s pretty much a nobody, certainly not a physician with any significant contribution to medicine. That’s why he’s being propped up to speak at your graduation to plump his resume for the other position he’s equally unqualified for…Surgeon General of the United States.
He’s going to speak to you about “the role of physicians in addressing the critical public health challenges facing our nation” and the paid interns at Doctors for America (aka: Center for American Progress) are going to live-tweet themselves into a narcissistic frenzy @ #Harvard14. Because this is all about DFA. Should be fun, seeing how Dr. Murthy has pretty much zero experience caring for patients, running a business, or providing health insurance for employees.
He’s so incredibly out of touch with the real world of medicine that he’ll probably throw some single payer nonsense at you and some intellectually dishonest garbage about guns being the biggest health care threat in America.
Hopefully, they’ve taught you to think for yourself at Harvard. Ask him about the VA scandal, ask him about the poor health outcomes for those on Medicaid, ask him about the failed exchanges, ask him about the millions losing their health insurance, or your fellow millennials getting utterly screwed by both part-time work and insane premiums.
But in case they haven’t taught you to think for yourself at Harvard. Don’t worry. In a few years you’ll be out here in the real world where truth matters and you’ll look back on your graduation and get really disgusted that Harvard used your graduation stage to prop up this political sham of a Surgeon General candidate.
And yes, I’ll be live tweeting #Harvard14 and watching the live stream on Thursday May 29 at 2pm.
Happy graduation to all, welcome to the profession.
Meg Edison MD is a pediatrician in private practice. You can follow Dr. Edison on Twitter at @megedison
