[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 130 (Saturday, August 5, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1685-E1686]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


   HONORING DR. LONNIE BRISTOW ON HIS ASCENSION TO PRESIDENT OF THE 
                      AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION

                                 ______


                           HON. GEORGE MILLER

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, August 4, 1995
  Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to 
Dr. Lonnie Bristow, a concerned physician, a constituent from San 
Pablo, CA., and a man with a heavy responsibility as we close out this 
century. Dr. Bristow was recently elected president of the American 
Medical Association. Dr. Bristow is also the first black president of 
the powerful medical organization.
  I have worked with Dr. Bristow over the years as we have tried to 
find a solution to the many health insurance problems facing our 
country. Dr. Bristow and the AMA will be at the center of this critical 
and ongoing debate.
  I wish Dr. Bristow many successes in his new position and I look 
forward to continuing to work together. I believe the article attached 
here from the Los Angeles Times captures the commitment Dr. Bristow has 
to his new position as president of the AMA and to pursuing health care 
policies that will benefit the entire Nation.
  Attached, article from the Los Angeles Times, Tuesday, July 18, 1995 
``He Might Have the Cure for Medicine's Ills''.
               He Might Have the Cure for Medicine's Ills

                         (By Bettijane Levine)

       It is oddly reassuring to spend time with Dr. Lonnie 
     Bristow, small-town doctor and newly elected president of the 
     American Medical Assn.--the first black president in the 
     AMA's 148-year history.
       During those moments, you bathe in the aura of a kindly, 
     assertive man who believes that the current crisis in 
     American medicine is not a fatal condition, and that in his 
     new capacity he can help to make it better.
       If Bristow can be believed--and he admits it might require 
     a leap of faith for some familiar with AMA history--the way 
     to start curing medicine's ills is for doctors to rejoin the 
     organization that a majority of them have abandoned in recent 
     years. Only 40% of U.S. doctors now belong to the AMA, down 
     from 70% two decades ago.
       We are in an era when doctors are losing control of the 
     care of their patients. Bristow says; when patients sense 
     that the quality of care is diminishing; when some of the 
     country's great medical institutions are endangered because 
     of lack of funds and drastic cutbacks.
       ``We now have health care being controlled by MBAs rather 
     than by physicians committed to the Hippocratic oath.'' 
     Bristow says, referring to the corporations from which most 
     Americans receive health insurance. ``And once health care 
     becomes corporatized, as it has, and once it goes on the open 
     stock market, then its major commitment is to Wall Street and 
     the stockholders to maximize profits, rather than to give the 
     best possible patient care. Business principles are 
     introduced that unfortunately put patient care second to 
     corporate profits.''
       It is an uncharacteristically direct outburst for Bristow, 
     65, who has worked his way up through the ranks of the AMA, 
     who appears to be the consummate organization man, and who 
     speaks sincerely but cautiously during an interview.
       His discretion has apparently been honed to a fine point 
     during 30 years of participation in the AMA, considered by 
     many to have been a racist organization.
       For much of the AMA's history, black doctors were not 
     allowed to join. Unit 1968, the organization permitted state 
     and local branches to deny membership to black doctors simply 
     because they were black.
       The AMA also backed South Africa's medical society in 
     international medical meetings, although the group supported 
     apartheid until 1989.
       Bristow, who has practiced internal medicine for 30 years 
     in San Pablo, Calif., speaks in a soft voice unmarked by 
     anger or agitation.
       He acknowledges that when he joined the organization in 
     1958, after finishing his internship at San Francisco City 
     and County Hospital, ``There were parts of the country where 
     black Americans could not join.'' But in San Francisco, he 
     says, ``there was nothing to it.''
       His philosophy regarding many tough issues, including 
     racism, he says, ``is that if you want to change something, 
     you do it from the inside. You don't stand outside and 
     complain about it.''
       He applies that reasoning to doctors who have broken away 
     from what Bristow calls ``the mother group,'' preferring to 
     belong only to associations related to their own medical 
     specialties. Cardiologists, radiologists, urologists and 
     others have begun to think of themselves as specialists above 
     all else, Bristow says.
       Many have splintered into even smaller subgroups, he says, 
     preferring to associate with those who are like them in the 
     sense that they support or oppose abortion rights, are 
     Republican or Democratic, are fee-for-service or salaried.
       Bristow's goal as president will be to ``make all these 
     doctors understand that we have much more to unify us than to 
     divide us. What we have in common is much more meaningful 
     than that which might pull us apart.''
       If the defecting doctors can be persuaded to ``come back 
     under the umbrella of the AMA,'' he believes, ``we will have 
     more leverage and a better chance to get the kind of medical 
     care for our patients that most of us want.
       ``The entire profession of medicine, and the doctor-patient 
     relationship we all respect and love, has sailed into harm's 
     way,'' he says. ``We have to pull together the way any family 
     would in a time of trouble,'' to get medicine back on the 
     right track.
       Bristow, a tall, imposing figure in a charcoal gray suit, 
     stops to ponder for a moment.
       ``It's hard for me to explain just how exhilarating and 
     personally satisfying it is to make an impact on another 
     human being's life in a positive way. Doctors share that, 
     above all else. It is the reason we became doctors in the 
     first place.
       ``That ability to make an impact, to help improve patients' 
     lives'' is being eroded by corporatized health care that is 
     not run by doctors but by business people and that dictates 
     what treatment, and how much treatment, doctors can 
     prescribe, Bristow says. ``It intimidates doctors into 
     acquiescing,'' he says
       ``That is a major reason for doctors to band together, no 
     matter what their specialties or political beliefs.
       ``I don't expect all doctors to agree on everything. But on 
     certain key issues, such as the sanctity of the doctor-
     patient relationship, the importance of freedom to choose 
     which doctor to see, the importance of physicians being able 
     to practice medicine the way they think is appropriate--those 
     are issues which all doctors should be able to rally 
     around.''
       He says that AMA will support a Patient Protection Act in 
     Congress at the end of summer. It would guarantee, he says, 
     full disclosure about all insurance programs, so potential 
     subscribers will know the program's track record, whether 
     previous users have been satisfied, and how much of the 
     premium they pay actually is spent on patient care as opposed 
     to dividends to stockholders and salaries for corporate 
     managers.
       The act would also mandate that physicians who contract 
     with an insurance program may ``not be fired without case and 
     without due process.'' Physicians are being threatened by 
     insurance companies who vow to fire them from the group if 
     they do not practice medicine the way the insurance company 
     directs them to, Bristow says.
       The AMA, he says, is working to get universal health-care 
     coverage, to make health care portable, and to make it 
     available to people with pre-existing conditions.
       Bristow was born in Harlem to a Baptist minister father and 
     a mother who was a nurse at nearby Sydenham hospital.
       His interest in medicine began, he says, when as a boy he 
     would go to the hospital emergency room to pick up his mother 
     and accompany her on the walk home. There were medical 
     workers of all races pulling together there, he recalls, and 
     they were saving people's lives.
       Bristow received his bachelor's degree from City College in 
     New York in 1953, and his medical degree from the New York 
     University College of Medicine in 1957.
       He went to Northern California for his internship and 
     residency, and has specialized in occupational health there 
     since.

[[Page E1686]]

       He began cutting back on his practice a few years ago, he 
     says as he became more involved in organizational work and 
     travels on behalf of the AMA.
       ``As a physician, I was helping one person at a time. I 
     became evident that if I really wanted to improve medical 
     care for my patients, for my community, perhaps even for the 
     whole country, I would have to have some sort of advantage, 
     some greater power than I had as one lone doctor. That's what 
     organized medicine provides.''
       He became the AMA's first black member of the Board of 
     Trustees in 1985, and the first black chairman of the board 
     in 1993. He spent about half of last year on AMA business, 
     for which he reportedly received $278,000 in compensation.
       Bristow and his wife, Marilyn (a former nurse who has been 
     his office manager for 30 years), were in Los Angeles 
     recently to help their son, Robert, settle into a Westwood 
     apartment. He is an obstetrician/gynecologist starting a 
     fellowship at UCLA in gynecologic oncology.
       Their daughter; Lisa, runs a day-care center in Northern 
     California.
       Bristow says he hopes to ``get away from the stereotypes'' 
     once associated with the group over which he now presides. He 
     would like the nation's doctors as well as the general public 
     to come to think of it as ``our AMA,'' meaning that it's a 
     group that has the public's health as its major concern, and 
     that it ``takes good care of America.''
     

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