By Kennedy Elliott

Medill Reports, Dec. 9, 2009

He approves the swine flu vaccine, sings to his patients and said he may be one of few people to have been uninvited to the White House. Dr. David Scheiner, President Barack Obama’s former physician, has been serving the Hyde Park community for more than 20 years.

Scheiner’s office sits along the side of a large parking lot on 52nd Street, also home to a McDonald’s and a ribs restaurant.

An 81-year-old woman sits in the corner of the doctor’s examination room one recent morning and looks reverently at Scheiner. Giving her a diligent and thorough exam, he shakes his head. “I am not happy with you, Ms. Robertson. Not happy at all,” the doctor says in a firm but gentle voice.

Back in his office, he explains that he fears she is starving to death. With none of her family members willing to live with her and monitor her well-being, he is doubtful that she will be able to stay independent much longer.

Though the woman’s case is one of the saddest he sees on a regular basis, her story is not unique. With a wealthy stream of U.S. congressmen, University of Chicago faculty and clergymen as patients, physicians at Hyde Park Associates treat a predominantly elderly population who are on Medicare.

Scheiner shakes his head and stares out of his office window onto the battered buildings below with a furrowed brow. It is not unusual for Scheiner to get this wrapped up in his patients, he said. Coming from a small family himself, he refers to his patients as his family.

Scheiner grew up in New Jersey and attended medical school at Columbia University. His subsequent residency at Michael Reese Hospital brought him to Chicago. Over the next several years, he worked at a few practices on the South and West sides of Chicago, landing in Hyde Park and working with the charismatic Dr. Quentin Young.

He joined Young, a renowned physician and health care reform activist, in practice in 1979. He calls it “the best decision I ever made.” Though Young retired years ago, Scheiner has remained at Hyde Park Associates, on-call 24 hours a day and seeing on average 20 to 25 patients a day.

“David is extremely passionate about patient care, and extremely popular with his patients,” Young said. “Deeply involved.”

Young became a sort of mentor to Scheiner, though the two differed in behavior about how “active” a physician should be in pushing a health care agenda to patients. Young had no qualms about insisting upon the importance of a national health care system to the politicians that came through his doors. Scheiner on the other hand expressed more reserve in his opinions and felt that, if patients wanted to hear his political views, they would ask.

This became more important with one patient in particular, a rising star on Capitol Hill – Illinois’ Sen. Barack Obama. Scheiner had been President Obama’s primary care physician for more than 20 years until he left Chicago for the White House.

Scheiner saw Obama’s popularity with staff and other patients at Hyde Park Associates and said he knew instantly that the young politician would become a leader in national affairs. Surprisingly, though, Scheiner said that he did not discuss views about health care reform with the future president.

“David would say, ‘That would be unethical,’” Young said with a laugh. “I certainly didn’t think it was unethical.”

In fact, Scheiner’s seemingly valuable views from the perspective of a physician working within the system were never heard by Obama. But, like Young, Scheiner has been a long-time advocate of health care reform. And reporters flocked to him when he announced that he did not support Obama’s proposed health care agenda earlier this year.

Scheiner supports a single-payer insurance system, which would create a single non-profit insurance institution for everyone, much different than the current free-market system. He said that the government has a moral and social obligation to provide health care to the public, just as it provides libraries and sanitation. But he takes the stance that the public option, where the government would provide health insurance coverage, will not be as effective as it is claimed to be.

“The public option as it stands now, even if it gets through, is bad. It’s inadequate,” he said. It would offer one government plan among all of the current health insurance options.

“It’s not going to be competitive [with insurance companies], and that’s exactly the point. It has become meaningless. If the whole thing fails, it has the potential to set things way back,” Scheiner said.

Critical of the insurance industry, he said industry giants “profit from people’s misery.” And if they exist in a new health care environment, strict and precise regulation should be enforced to keep them financially in check. But Scheiner said he assumes his criticism of the President’s public option for health care explains why he was recently “disinvited” from attending a White House event the day before it was scheduled.

The White House did not respond to questions regarding Scheiner’s statements by the time of publication.

Scheiner’s advice for Obama is not to worry about pleasing constituencies for a presidential run in 2012 but rather to tackle tough issues and be a “one-term President,” if necessary.

“He doesn’t need people to love him, he’s being too timid. And it’s tough – this is a country that is basically conservative. But he should lead us,” Scheiner said.

Despite his already progressive tendencies, Scheiner said he is getting more radical as he ages. After Scheiner became more vocal with his political opinions in the backdrop of U.S. health care reform, the National Review at one point called him a socialist, he said.

“I consider that a badge of honor,” he added, chuckling. Scheiner also said he initially became a doctor for the idealism and romanticism of it all.

He recalled a defining moment in his career when he was called upon to save a man’s life. The man had collapsed due to a diabetic episode, and needed an injection to restore consciousness. Scheiner began running down the street, medicine in hand, and injected the life-saving antidote in the patient’s arm. This dramatic and theatrical event is exactly what Scheiner meant by romanticism, he said.

Days later, Scheiner received the same call, and again had to run to the scene to save the same man’s life. Scheiner heroically injected the medication, though a bit more disenchanted. Days later, Scheiner received another call about the same man, who had collapsed again. However, the repetition had taken its toll on his enthusiasm for being a hero.

“Even a fantasy can be overdone, I guess,” he said.

And Scheiner isn’t making plans to retire any time soon. Forever a competitor with his mentor, he jokingly said that he’ll stay in practice longer than Young, who retired at 85.

“I’ve done essentially everything you can possibly do in medicine,” he said.

“I walk around with a sandwich board that says ‘I’m a doctor.’ Whenever someone calls me ‘Mr. Scheiner,’ I sort of get shivers. My identity is as a physician, and that’s part of it’s going to be so hard for me to retire – I don’t know if there’s going to be anything left when they take away the ‘Dr.’”

http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=152733



