YouSaid · the spoken record

Abdul El-Sayed

lines on the record: 81
first: 2020-02-20
most recent: 2020-02-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I really appreciate that. It's been great to spend some time here. Really enjoyed access to the students and the institute. I've learned a lot and really grateful for your leadership throughout the past decade plus in our politics. And I look forward, I hope that this is the first and a long, continuous conversation about.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's really, I think that's the big question we have to be answering right now because we saw what happened in 2016 and everybody points to a few folks who didn't vote for Hillary. But I'll tell you, as a Bernie supporter, I definitely did. And everybody I know did. I wonder, though, right, you have a lot of folks in the party. When Bernie Sanders is the nominee, are they going to come along? Are they going to work hard for Bernie Sanders? Are they going to make sure that they're knocking doors, spending their money and their time and their resources to do it? I hope that no matter who the nominee is, that all of us are as committed to beating Donald Trump as I know Bernie Sanders is. And that's, I think, an equally valid question on either side of the party right now.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That allows our party leaders to look at a plurality voters going one way and then make a decision to deny that person the nomination. And also what happens if and when Bernie Sanders just wins it fair and square, takes the majority of delegates, will the rest of the party come along?”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. I think there is a consensus in all the communities that we have to beat Donald Trump and everything that we've been hearing from Bernie Sanders has been so focused on beating Donald Trump. In fact, he's probably the person who talks most about beating Donald Trump. And so, but to answer the other question, right, which is I worry a lot about what happens. What is the impetus?”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Had to be Donald Trump. Look, I always, at the end of the day, I have serious issues with Michael Bloomberg for many, many reasons, one of which is that I lived in New York while he was mayor, and I got stopped in Frisk because I walked through the world as a young brown guy. And then he spoke at Soros Fellowship for New Americans annual meeting. And I asked him specifically about his policies. His response showed a level of disinterest in the sheer humanity of people whose constitutional rights he was taken away. I worry a lot about electing that person president. That being said, the clear and present danger of Donald Trump as president, I think is something that I will, no matter what happens, vote against. This is a man who goes after fundamental rights of people in ways that defile our democracy and he needs to be beaten.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If it happens, that Bernie goes into a convention and he is leading in the delegate count and he's not the nominee. I can't speak for everybody. I would say though that for all of those folks who worked so hard to make sure that their nominee won in vote totals, which is how democracy works, I worry about whether or not they'd been disenfranchised. And like that is a concern that we all as Democrats ought to have. But the reason that I think that”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mastermind, and I'll answer yours. Deal, deal. I think if he won it by plurality of votes, I think, you know, I would say that that's the rules of the game and he won it. Fair and square is a different story, right? Spending that kind of money, I don't know that that's entirely fair. And that's partially because the rules of the game tend to be rigged, but that's the rules of the game we agreed upon.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I also really, really worry if that nominee ends up being somebody who was nominated by dint of spending two to three billion dollars to get themselves nominated.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that would be a devastating outcome for the party. I think if we do this under, again, under an exclusionary roof where a bunch of folks get together and decide who the nominee is despite having created or gone through a democratic process, or at least the process we all agreed upon at the beginning. We select a nominee who is not elected by the people per the rules of the game. I worry a lot about that.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Difficult to understand plans, right? That are based on some outcome in the future about how much you're paying in premium and how much you're paying in deductible. That's not”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And frankly, in both Medicare for all bills that have been proposed, there would be some system of private insurance that would be allowed. It's just not relying on private insurance, right, to provide the bulk of healthcare for everyone that is critically failing us. And it's not just that we have 10% of the population that's uncovered at all. It's that even for folks who do have healthcare coverage, they're being smacked on the back end, right? with bills for something that they already paid for in the first place and thought it would be there right the operative word in insurance is sure and if you're not sure that you're going to be taking care of financially right for having paid in your premiums i don't know what this thing is doing in the first place for folks and also the interesting thing about the polling that i just think it's really worth clearing up is that you know you pointed to this idea that people are worried if and when they lose their health insurance choice but you know you and i both know how that works right you get an email from your employer at some point in the year saying that you have to pick between you know two or three equally”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let me speak to that in a couple ways. I understand that there's a theoretical question about how the community of voters will think about these issues that haven't been tested in American politics. But there's a real question, right, that's been answered about how the community of voters thinks about somebody who is unwilling to engage seriously with the fundamental challenges of our time around inaccess to health care, etc. And so we had that candidate in 2016, right? We didn't win the election. So I worry a little bit, right, about this idea of playing this hypothetical out versus playing the reality of what we just did last cycle out. I also think that there's this notion that doing every other high income country in the world Has done right is somehow tantamount to some ideological.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“True. Fair enough. I say that as somebody who's not been around for 50 years. But at the end of the day, the consistency in having said the same thing over and over again is a unique thing in American politics. We don't see that very often. No, he's authentic.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would like to see an outcome where whoever wins the plurality of delegates wins the race, right? To your point, right? It's a multipolar race. There are more people in the field. And a lot of the field has taken a lot of insights of Bernie's 2016 run and tried to incorporate them, of course, without the same kind of integrity that comes with having talked about them for 50 years. But you're going to see some movements because I haven't been around.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll say a couple things. So, you know, obviously, the person who wins the most votes should win the race, and that's democracy. And I think all of us agree with that. It's a multipolar race. No matter what.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A part of these institutions that nurture, but like to whose exclusion. And my point is that we need leadership that recognizes both the importance of institutions with a lowercase i and also realizes that in order to have them and to have them function, we need to change them so that they function for everybody, not just for a few.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, if we think that the kind of Democrat who is going to win is somebody who is beholden to these institutions, then I just think we're missing the lesson of history. I think we're at a point right now. You look at the inequality in this country, you look at the fact that unemployment may be at an all-time low but underemployment is at all time high. You look at the level of student debt, you look at inaccess to health care, and people are fundamentally frustrated with institutions that have locked them out. Bernie has been talking to those institutions for an extremely long time and talking about exactly how they have been misappropriated for greed and for power for a few, to create the circumstances in which so many people find themselves. And I think that's why he's resonating. It's because he is saying what everybody else is thinking about the fact that they can't get access anymore. And so, you know, for folks like you and I, we've been lucky, but we've also been.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But the second, I'll just say this right we nominated in the last go around the most institutionally decorated Democrat you could find anywhere. And we lost. And we lost because what the other side, not by their virtue, but almost by accident found, is that the broad swath of Americans have been so excluded by these institutions that we hold so dear that they decided to vote against them entirely. And if that came in the form of just, I hate to say it, a narcissist with no interest in the public good, then so be it. But that's what they voted for. I think we have in Bernie somebody who has taken on those institutions his entire career on behalf of the people because he recognizes the inequity that they've created.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think that part of why that's mostly what you hear is because it'd be in politics to say the first, but I do think it does animate some of what you do here. What about the second?”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, let me spread that fear into two buckets. There is the fear that is more about what happens to the institutions in which a lot of these people have power, which is far more cynical. And my sense just goes back to what I just said, which is to say if you're afraid that Bernie Sanders or Bernie Sanders presidency means that these institutions are disempowered because of their role and their complete”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To these institutions that they somehow perpetuate the way that these institutions exclude other people. And so to me, I think institutions are deeply valuable and we have to invest in them. But we have to sometimes push against them because they can be a tool for the kind of exclusion that I think we see across this country. And that's exclusion across a number of different bounds, whether it's racial exclusion or it's exclusion based on gender or it's exclusion based on what your parents did for a living or where you grew up. We see that everywhere. And so yeah, I'm somewhat impatient with institutions that want to take credit for all the good things and not pay attention to maybe all the bad things.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. I will say institutions have been quite kind to me. And at the same time, I see how they've been unkind to so many other people. I think my cousin's in Egypt, right? Just as smart, just as capable. They drive cabs in Egypt. I don't. That's not my life. And a lot of that is because of opportunity. But we cannot continue to believe that the institutions that exist in America give equitable access to what they have, to everyone, even in America. And that to me is an outrage and it's frustrating. And so there's this sort of implicit respect for institutions that is expected of you. When I've never quite believed that those institutions have always served the best interests of everyone. And oftentimes the folks who do wait their turn in these institutions become so in your”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I hope not. I've got nothing personally against anybody, but I did want to draw the contrast about how folks have chosen to engage in public life.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know it's a really uncomfortable thing, right? Because folks don't like conflict. And naturally, when you're calling somebody out in public, they don't like that. At the same time, though, if you're driven by an honest, substantial assessment of the circumstances, I think people see that”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, although when you sit down with folks and you talk it through beyond the talking points that the industry puts out there, I think people really see the logic in it. And we'll talk about it a little bit more. But there was a space for conversation that a lot of folks didn't expect to exist. And I think we generated that space. And even though I'm not governor of the state of Michigan, I'm really grateful that we were able to move the conversation in ways that put issues on the table that forced the current governor to pay attention to them in ways that she might not have had to.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I learned a ton about myself. I think A, I really love people. And the best parts of my day every day were the moments where I got to really just sit and listen to somebody I'd never met before. And hear their story and put it all together to think about the broader patterns. I trained as an epidemiologist, which, you know, literally what you do is you make patterns about disease and listening to everybody's case being able to look folks in the eye as they talk to you about their challenges or feel the stress in their hands as they shake your hand. Those are unique opportunities. Most people don't get that. And I was really grateful for that. I also learned that I don't compromise on my beliefs. There were a lot of moments, whether it was in early conversations with consultants or folks who were like, look, at the end of the day, people really like you. They just don't, you know, you're a little bit out there. You're talking about single payer health care in the state of Michigan. That's absurd. Nobody's heard about that.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I sort of think about running for office kind of like when lunar modules re-enter into the atmosphere. Like all that is not part of you will be burned off. And there's a high probability of just bouncing off and never actually getting back in”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had a really powerful story to tell about who we are and who we ought to be, which is at core what the question of our politics are. I also knew that in the state that had become defined by the Flint Water Crisis in the news, then who better but a former health commissioner to solve it? And I also knew that if we were able to go out and have an honest conversation,”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You walk into politics with The circumstances are given, right? And you're constantly thinking about how to turn those challenges into strength. I knew, I mean, the reason I decided to run fundamentally was I saw what happened in Flint. I saw what politics were, keeping me from being able to do in Detroit. I watched Donald Trump get elected president. And at some point, you're saying, like, there's something really wrong with this. I knew that the challenges I faced as a 33-year-old Muslim guy named Abdul who'd never run for office before would be pretty daunting. But I also knew that”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. Nobody wants to move their corporate headquarters into a city where the lead poisoning prevalence is higher than it is in Flint.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was in my role in Detroit and we were doing all kinds of work that I'm quite proud of and grateful I got to do with a community of folks who took it on with me. But there was a ceiling on what we could do because of the politics of the circumstance, right? It was impolitic to talk about lead and the fact that the demolitions program, the city of Detroit was potentially poisoning kids in the era of Flint. It was in politics to talk about watershutoffs. And I found myself consistently butting heads with the mayor about whether or not we could do work on those issues. At the same time, I'm watching as that same system of politics leads to the systematic poisoning of kids in Flint.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's exactly it, right? Is it easy to think about health as healthcare, but really, health is about all of those things that happen before somebody gets sick in the first place. And so the question we asked ourselves at the health department was, what are the things that we can do that have a disproportionate impact on those health outcomes that create a pathway for poverty to move from one generation to another? So whether it was solving vision deficits or addressing infant mortality and preterm birth or taking on lead poisoning or making sure that kids weren't breathing air that was poisoning them and forcing them to miss a day of school every two weeks as persistent asthma does, all of these things have knock-on effects. And so we wanted to think broad based about it. And that's the thing about public health is it actually has to do with all of the things that happen before we get to healthcare. And so you've got to be broad-based about the interventions that you take on.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But most of the lead poisoning in America is attributable to lead based paint in homes that were built before 1978. 93% of homes in Detroit were built before 1978. And so we've got zip codes in Detroit where the prevalence of lead poisoning is threefold what it was in the city of Flint at the height of the water crisis. And that's about paying attention to what happens in home. It's a far slower moving but equally disastrous consequence. And so thinking about how we systematically solve that was a big part of what animated our work in the city as well.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Good news was that there were a community of folks inside the city who were committed to taking on these issues and thinking about what we could do. And for us, the Flint Water Crisis was obviously terrible outcome of this system of austerity imposed by the state. But it's also left us sort of with this legacy whereby we think about lead poisoning and we think about water.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. And, you know, I hope that that little intervention, obvious thing, has serious long-term implications for disrupting the intergenerational poverty that we see that takes hold in communities like Detroit because we assume that in this sort of frame of political reasoning where everybody's accountable for their own poverty, that somehow people are just making bad decisions when in fact we as a society have often just given up on communities and we fail to invest in very little things that so many other communities get to take for granted that could fundamentally change the trajectory of a life.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kinds. I mean, as a child of color, right? I know what happens when you get labeled the bad kid, right? And that happened to me a lot when I was a kid. Now, if it's because you just can't see what's on the board and you're trying to entertain yourself, there's a solution for that. Just get the kid a pair of glasses and all of a sudden what's happening on the board gets a little bit more interesting because you can see it. And so, you know, build a program to provide every kid a pair of glasses. And that's something we could do.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we spent a year apart, and I moved out to Detroit to take on this role of rebuilding a health department that had been shut down in 2012 when the city was facing bankruptcy. You know, the same austerity measures that took away the right to self-determination from low-income black folks in Flint that led to the Flint water crisis, the consequences in Detroit were that they shut down a 185-year-old health department in a city with a higher infant mortality rate than my father's native Egypt, where I told you about their family's experience. And so I walked into an apartment with five city employees, 85 contractors in the back of the building where they pay parking tickets in Detroit. And we got to work. And I think had I known any better of what I was walking into, I probably wouldn't have taken the job. But I'll be honest with you, it was the most fulfilling and exhilarating work I'd ever done because you'd have this idea of saying, look, we know that 30% of our kids who get tested for vision deficit.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're all in the scribble together. But we've been married now at that point for some time, and Sara's just an incredibly giving human being who appreciated the value of the work. And she had just matched into residency in New York, which is where we were.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Met an undergrad. We were actually that rare couple who got married, she was 19, I was 21 and had friends who were like, oh, you're robbing the cradle. I was like, I'm in the cradle.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he asked me if I'm interested in the public health job. And it was not like we're having a long conversation. And I say, yeah, of course I'm interested in the public health job, not knowing exactly what that job is. He said, great, my scheduler, find us a time. I fly back through Detroit two weeks later. I'd spent two weeks learning everything I could about health in Detroit and put together a presentation. And at the end of this sort of hour and a half lunch where I'm walking Mayor Duggan through the challenges that we face in Detroit, he said, look, you got the job. I said, you know, Mr. May, that's great. I just, I actually don't quite know what the job is. I will help director.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had a friend that he and I were in the same fellowship program and he was at Yale Law School, had a bunch of offers to go work for White Shuva law firms or go and be a law clerk for a judge. And he chose to go to the city of Detroit, which was an uncommon move. And I happened to be in town. reached out to him and just said, you know, what made you take this move? And I'd love to learn more about what you're doing in public health. And I brought some CVs. He said, look, I don't cover health, but let me just get this to some people and see what happens. A couple weeks later, I get a call from a very gruff voice on the other end of the line, and it's the mayor of Detroit, Mike Dougie.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Only a couple years, yeah, yeah. It was one of those jobs that you sort of take because you don't know any better. I didn't know what I was walking into. I was 30 years old. I'd held these”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I also wrote an article, though, against the Big Gulp bank because I just don't think it's particularly effective, right? Like, there's a stereotype that the reason that Softrinks are linked to obesity is because everybody's walking around with a big gulp, right? That's not the case. It's the slow and steady, consistent drinking of sugar water in effect. But you think about LeBron James. I mean, he and I graduated high school the same year. I've spent my whole career focused on health in one move. If he were to just say, you know what, I'm not going to be a frontman for Sprite anymore because I think Sprite is poison. That's making kids sick. That would do more for public health in America than I could do for the rest of my career. And LeBron, if you're listening, I know he's a class. He is an”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right Got some attention. Unfortunately, they didn't get the attention of the people I wanted it to. You know, the crazy thing is LeBron James and I.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I was an assistant professor at Columbia. And while I was there, I worked in an area of scientific research that focuses on the role of systems rather than individual risk factors on shaping people's health and also focused on how we bring that kind of analysis to tangible real-world problems. But again, got a little bit frustrated because a lot of times in the academy, especially in epidemiology, which is an applied science, our work doesn't matter unless it makes people healthier. We were writing papers that would only really be read by folks who already kind of agreed with what we had to say. And I wanted my work to have an impact. And that's ultimately why I ended up leaving academia.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Dinner with a friend, and I get on the subway, and she's laying down on the seats of the subway. And I actually went home that night and pulled my residency application and said, you know, I don't know that I can make the difference that I want as a clinician.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That and also that we weren't going to be able to actually help her And I ended up working with my attending physician who was really responsible for a care. And we decided to admit her, took care of her for two weeks. And, you know, she became, for me, almost a referendum on whether or not I would pursue a clinical career, ended up diagnosing her with full-blown AIDS. She had an actively bleeding mass in her pelvis. She had had this hypotension, which she'd had high blood pressure her whole life. But one of the things that HIV can do is infest the gland that controls your blood pressure. And that had happened to her. So she couldn't keep up a high blood pressure, you know, normal blood pressure that you or I would walk around with. We found the only discharge facilities that would accept somebody for rehab who had HIV. We got her placed into housing that she had access to. And in the end, she decided that she wanted to go home with her daughter. And about two weeks later, I was just getting on the subway to have.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She had come in because she had fallen and hit her head in the subway in the middle of the winter. And she came in inebriated. And if it's 10 o'clock in the morning and you're inebriated, that means you're likely suffering from alcoholism. But the way that she was misprocessed in the emergency room really was a symptom of this broader, I think, moral rot in the way that we think about healthcare in this country. If you fall on your head, you hit your head, David, you'd get a CT scan almost immediately. They'd want to make sure you weren't having a brain bleed. She didn't get that. And when I asked the emergency room doctor, who was only a couple of years further ahead in his training than I was, why he said, well, you know, if we admitted her, she'd be a social admin, which was meaning that...”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or it's how we subtly discriminate in healthcare against certain groups of people. And as I trained, I realized that I was really a lot more interested in public health than I was in clinical practice. And so I decided to take my career in that direction. I got to do a PhD in epidemiology and public health at Oxford. And then when I was in my fourth year of medical school, I got to take care of a patient who really, I think, accentuated my frustrations with the healthcare system and realized that the kind of difference I wanted to make, I was not going to be able to make within the confines of a hospital or clinic and that I would much rather spend my time thinking about people's experiences with health while they live and learn and work and pray and play in the communities in which they live.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And preparing to be a part of, fundamentally be a part of the problem, right? Whether it was the exceedingly high cost of healthcare, the barriers that we put up for people who don't have access to the system because of their circumstances, or it's just the way that the system is conditioned to think about people and to treat them, whether it's the fact that we don't really pay attention to people 99% of the time when they're outside of our clinics or hospitals.”
2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source