[AKA_Monet]

I need to really read the newspaper article...

Being involved in healthcare research and having to frequent the hospital often, it is amazing that anyone who is in emergency would even care what color the healthcare staff is!!!

My father, a dentist, who owns his own practice for over 35 years, often gets African American patients that exclaim to him while he is treating them, "I'd rather see a white doctor!" as they storm out of the office...

Then when these same patients go to see these "Beverly Hills" type dentists whose specialities are X-treme makeover with total mandibular reconstruction and implants, and these same patients ask for a million dollar smile--then show them their welfare insurance, these dentists call and yell at my dad as to why he referred these patients to them...

If anything, I know my father's office is one of the most multi-racial and multi-ethnic practices in the SoCal area. He employs 4-5 dentists that speak English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese and Tagalog (sp?)--from the Phillipines... In fact he still employed a dentist from Iran even after 9-11--so Farsi was spoken!!! After that he is considering many East African dentists... So either Eritrea, Ethiopia or Somolia will represent at his office--that's just what his patient load is...

Then refers many of the poorest patients that are willing to make the choice to go to Mexican clinics in Tijuana because it is cheaper there. Many poor children need orthodontic treatments and MediCal does not pay for those kinds of treatments... There are extremely talented orthodontists in Mexico...

So, for some "ignant" fool who likes to discriminate thinking that people of color who work in the medical profession are incompetent--better hope no terminal illness ever hits you--sometimes the ethnobotany treatments practiced for 1000s of years before Western Medicine might be insufficient...