Bill Frist announces he won't seek presidency

GroundedSailor

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Feb 18, 2001
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Not that he had much of a chance to get elected. Might have been a VP candidate though but I suspect he would be a drain on the Rep Presidential candidate.

The scary part is this man is going back to the medical profession with a record of video diagnosis - Terri Schiavo??


Link

Frist announces he won't seek presidency
Updated 11/29/2006 12:00 PM ET
By Bill Theobald, Gannett News Service
WASHINGTON ? Sen. Bill Frist, Republican majority leader from Tennessee, announced this morning that he will not be running for president in 2008.

ON DEADLINE: Read his statement, comment on decision and '08 playing field

"In the Bible, God tells us for everything there is a season, and for me, for now, this season of being an elected official has come to a close. I do not intend to run for president in 2008," Frist said in a statement released by his office.

The announcement comes after Frist spent several years laying the groundwork for a presidential bid. Frist had spent much of the past two years visiting key presidential states, including Iowa, creating a field operation and raising money for national, state and local candidates in these states.

Frist said he and his wife, Karyn, "will take a sabbatical from public life. At this point a return to private life will allow me to return to my professional roots as a healer and to refocus my creative energies on innovative solutions to seemingly insurmountable challenges Americans face," Frist said.

The statement makes unclear Frist's plans for the future.

"Karyn and I will seek the best opportunity to serve," Frist said. "I may eventually return to what I've done for most of my adult life, heal through medicine and health.

"In the short term, I will resume my regular medical mission trips as a doctor around the world to serve those in poverty, in famine, and in civil war. I will continue to be a strong voice to fix what is broken in our health care system and to address the issues of clean water and public health globally. We will stay actively engaged in policy issues affecting the lives of Americans."

Frist, who retires this year after two six-year terms, struggled at times as majority leader to move legislation through the complex political processes of the Senate.

He took a further blow when Republicans lost control of both the House and Senate in the November election.

 

Pens1566

Lifer
Oct 11, 2005
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Ironic that he could tell his chances of winning were in a PVS, but not Terry Schiavo. Maybe it was being up close and not checking out his chances on video that made the difference.
 

Tom

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
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he's a heart surgeon of some note, I believe.

I don't agree with his politics, but he did a couple of good things, one, he came to his senses on cell-stem research, and he moved a pretty good immigration reform bill through the Senate, but the House blocked it.
 

ayabe

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Aug 10, 2005
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Didn't he refuse to admit that you can't get HIV form tears a few years ago? This man is an embarrassment to the medical profession as a whole without even bringing Terri Schiavo into the equation.
 

Pens1566

Lifer
Oct 11, 2005
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Originally posted by: Tom
he's a heart surgeon of some note, I believe.

I don't agree with his politics, but he did a couple of good things, one, he came to his senses on cell-stem research, and he moved a pretty good immigration reform bill through the Senate, but the House blocked it.

A heart surgeon that was widely ridiculed by his peers after the Schiavo incident. God help his patients if he goes back into practice.
 

Tom

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
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Originally posted by: Pens1566
Originally posted by: Tom
he's a heart surgeon of some note, I believe.

I don't agree with his politics, but he did a couple of good things, one, he came to his senses on cell-stem research, and he moved a pretty good immigration reform bill through the Senate, but the House blocked it.

A heart surgeon that was widely ridiculed by his peers after the Schiavo incident. God help his patients if he goes back into practice.


I didn't agree with Congress getting involved in the Schiavo case, however, I also don't consider "ridicule" an appropriate way to express disagreement, particularly between professionals.

So if you are right, I'm not impressed.

 

Harvey

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Oct 9, 1999
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Originally posted by: Tom
he's a heart surgeon of some note, I believe.
Yeah -- He's noted for his miraculous instant diagnosis of Terri Schiavo based entirely on a viewing a few minutes of video and for not disclosing that he had placed his stock in Hospital Corporation of America in a "blind" trust that wasn't so blind that it wasn't under his control while dealing with legislation that would affect the value of the stock.
For years, Frist was criticized for holding HCA stock while directing legislation on Medicare reform and patient issues. His office has consistently deflected criticism by noting that his assets were in a blind trust and not under his active control.
Frist is slime.
 

Pens1566

Lifer
Oct 11, 2005
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Originally posted by: Tom
Originally posted by: Pens1566
Originally posted by: Tom
he's a heart surgeon of some note, I believe.

I don't agree with his politics, but he did a couple of good things, one, he came to his senses on cell-stem research, and he moved a pretty good immigration reform bill through the Senate, but the House blocked it.

A heart surgeon that was widely ridiculed by his peers after the Schiavo incident. God help his patients if he goes back into practice.


I didn't agree with Congress getting involved in the Schiavo case, however, I also don't consider "ridicule" an appropriate way to express disagreement, particularly between professionals.

So if you are right, I'm not impressed.

If it wasn't ridicule, I don't know what you'd call the sentiment expressed by his fellow MDs, including some in his class at Harvard(?).
 

Tom

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
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Originally posted by: Harvey
Originally posted by: Tom
he's a heart surgeon of some note, I believe.
Yeah -- He's noted for his miraculous instant diagnosis of Terri Schiavo based entirely on a viewing a few minutes of video and for not disclosing that he had placed his stock in Hospital Corporation of America in a "blind" trust that wasn't so blind that it wasn't under his control while dealing with legislation that would affect the value of the stock.
For years, Frist was criticized for holding HCA stock while directing legislation on Medicare reform and patient issues. His office has consistently deflected criticism by noting that his assets were in a blind trust and not under his active control.
Frist is slime.


To be clear, i'm glad he isn't running for President, I think he was part of a Republican leadership that has run the country into the ditch, and failed completely to do it's job of overseeing the worst President in our history. So I don't like his politics, for the most part.

But, the blind trust issue was overblown, and I don't know that the "video diagnosis" of Teri Schiavo, whatever the facts really are, had any significant impact on anything either.

Personally, I don't have any doubt Frist is a good man, and a good doctor.

 

techs

Lifer
Sep 26, 2000
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Originally posted by: Tom
he's a heart surgeon of some note, I believe.

I don't agree with his politics, but he did a couple of good things, one, he came to his senses on cell-stem research, and he moved a pretty good immigration reform bill through the Senate, but the House blocked it.
he's a heart surgeon of some note, I believe.
Actually, iirc, he is just a plain old heart surgeon. Whose Daddy owns a huge hospital chain. As to being of "some note" I don't think he has done ANYTHING in the medical field above and beyond being a run of the mill heart surgeon.

 

Tom

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
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Originally posted by: techs
Originally posted by: Tom
he's a heart surgeon of some note, I believe.

I don't agree with his politics, but he did a couple of good things, one, he came to his senses on cell-stem research, and he moved a pretty good immigration reform bill through the Senate, but the House blocked it.
he's a heart surgeon of some note, I believe.
Actually, iirc, he is just a plain old heart surgeon. Whose Daddy owns a huge hospital chain. As to being of "some note" I don't think he has done ANYTHING in the medical field above and beyond being a run of the mill heart surgeon.

Maybe this is typical of all heart surgeons, I don't know..

"Before entering politics, Frist taught at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and was the founding director of the Vanderbilt Transplant Center. He has written a book and was the editor of another on organ transplantation."

source Washington Post
 

RightIsWrong

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Apr 29, 2005
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There is no way that he is going back into practice. His family owns the largest private For-profit healthcare organization in the country. He doesn't need to get his hands dirty anymore in the surgical field.....he will stick to keeping them dirty by becoming a lobbyist instead.
 

BrownTown

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Dec 1, 2005
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Personally I think Frist is a good guy, id way rather have a president that did something usefull in life before politics (like being a doctor) than a career politician or a trial lawyer. The whole insider trading stuff is completely overblown by democrats to try to discredit him. Unfortunately he was named senate majority leader which pretty much meant he was forced to argue Bush's policies in the senate. I conisder his downfall being one of many good guys who political careers were essentially destroyed due to their position in the Bush administration. Unfortunately many people will end up taking the fall for Bush while he himself will never be hurt by his own incompetance except for in his legacy (but you dead then so who really cares).
 

GroundedSailor

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Originally posted by: jackschmittusa
He is one of many idiots that need to be scratched off the list for '08.

That's what I thought when I read the article - 1 down ? to go!

Originally posted by: Tom
Maybe this is typical of all heart surgeons, I don't know..

"Before entering politics, Frist taught at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and was the founding director of the Vanderbilt Transplant Center. He has written a book and was the editor of another on organ transplantation."
When you have a lot of money and the family is in the medical field it is easy to become the founder director of almost anything. As to writing a book - again the money plays a part and a lot of doctors publish papers but don't have time to write books.


 

techs

Lifer
Sep 26, 2000
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Originally posted by: Tom
Originally posted by: techs
Originally posted by: Tom
he's a heart surgeon of some note, I believe.

I don't agree with his politics, but he did a couple of good things, one, he came to his senses on cell-stem research, and he moved a pretty good immigration reform bill through the Senate, but the House blocked it.
he's a heart surgeon of some note, I believe.
Actually, iirc, he is just a plain old heart surgeon. Whose Daddy owns a huge hospital chain. As to being of "some note" I don't think he has done ANYTHING in the medical field above and beyond being a run of the mill heart surgeon.

Maybe this is typical of all heart surgeons, I don't know..

"Before entering politics, Frist taught at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and was the founding director of the Vanderbilt Transplant Center. He has written a book and was the editor of another on organ transplantation."

source Washington Post

"Founding Director" was probably due to daddies money. However, writing a book is somewhat noteworthy. Of course it may not be an important work and may have also been financed with daddies money to pad his resume. In fact many of my college professors wrote books but only a couple of them were 'noteworthy". That said it is an accomplishment to achieve what he has in life, yet not, imo, "noteworthy' in the medical area.
 

Beowulf

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Now I don't care for this guy but if his track record I listed below is correct I would say he is an accomplished heart surgeon.

Frist joined the lab of W. John Powell Jr., M.D. at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1977, where he continued his training in cardiovascular physiology. He left the lab in 1978 to become a resident in surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. In 1983, he spent time at Southampton General Hospital, Southampton, England as senior registrar in cardiothoracic surgery. He returned to Massachusetts General in 1984 as chief resident and fellow in cardiothoracic surgery. From 1985 until 1986, Frist was senior fellow and chief resident in cardiac transplant service and cardiothoracic surgery at the Stanford University School of Medicine. After completing his fellowship, he became a faculty member at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where he began a heart and lung transplantation program. He also became staff surgeon at the Nashville Veterans Administration Hospital. In 1989, he founded the Vanderbilt Transplant Center.

He is currently licensed as a physician, and is certified in general surgery and heart surgery. He has performed over 150 heart transplants and lung transplants, including pediatric heart transplants and combined heart and lung transplants.
 

techs

Lifer
Sep 26, 2000
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Originally posted by: Beowulf
Now I don't care for this guy but if his track record I listed below is correct I would say he is an accomplished heart surgeon.

Frist joined the lab of W. John Powell Jr., M.D. at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1977, where he continued his training in cardiovascular physiology. He left the lab in 1978 to become a resident in surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. In 1983, he spent time at Southampton General Hospital, Southampton, England as senior registrar in cardiothoracic surgery. He returned to Massachusetts General in 1984 as chief resident and fellow in cardiothoracic surgery. From 1985 until 1986, Frist was senior fellow and chief resident in cardiac transplant service and cardiothoracic surgery at the Stanford University School of Medicine. After completing his fellowship, he became a faculty member at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where he began a heart and lung transplantation program. He also became staff surgeon at the Nashville Veterans Administration Hospital. In 1989, he founded the Vanderbilt Transplant Center.

He is currently licensed as a physician, and is certified in general surgery and heart surgery. He has performed over 150 heart transplants and lung transplants, including pediatric heart transplants and combined heart and lung transplants.
Accomplished, yes. Noteworthy, no.

 

BrownTown

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That is pretty much a judgement call given that none of us have actually read his book, or have a good idea for jsut how many people have done 150 heart transplants, but looking at his medical resume it seems the level of accomplishments are pretty noteworthy to me. Especially considering he was still relatively young when he quit medicine for politics.

Well anyways, the Frist center here at Vanderbilt is being redone and such so maybe he can come back and be a professor or something, I'm sure they would be more than happy to give him his job back :p.
 

Termagant

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Originally posted by: BrownTown
That is pretty much a judgement call given that none of us have actually read his book, or have a good idea for jsut how many people have done 150 heart transplants, but looking at his medical resume it seems the level of accomplishments are pretty noteworthy to me. Especially considering he was still relatively young when he quit medicine for politics.

Well anyways, the Frist center here at Vanderbilt is being redone and such so maybe he can come back and be a professor or something, I'm sure they would be more than happy to give him his job back :p.

They could add a wing for the development of video diagnosing. Think of all money that could be saved if you outsourced your doctor.

Also can't forget the research into HIV infected tears.
 

BrownTown

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You do realise that stuff was due to a need to support the party position don't you? I'm sure if it were up to him Frist wouldn't be making a stupid diagnosis by video, but given that he is the only high ranking republican who actually has a PHD he is the one who gets stuck with making a fool of themselves. Its just politics at its most retarded, not an indication that Bill Frist is an idiot, he jsut has to act like one in order to fit in with the Bush administration.
 

jackschmittusa

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BrownTown

You do realise that stuff was due to a need to support the party position don't you? I'm sure if it were up to him Frist wouldn't be making a stupid diagnosis by video, but given that he is the only high ranking republican who actually has a PHD he is the one who gets stuck with making a fool of themselves. Its just politics at its most retarded, not an indication that Bill Frist is an idiot, he jsut has to act like one in order to fit in with the Bush administration.

Even if this was his only reason for doing it (which I doubt), he has prostituted the respect granted him by virtue of his being a doctor.

People visit doctors expressly for honest assessments of their medical conditions, relying on the knowlege and experience of the doctor to diagnose and treat their medical conditions. A great deal of trust is placed in doctors as there is often some risk involved in the possible treatments.

Frist demonstrated that he is not worthy of that trust.

As far as his status among his peers, he must now be a joke. He knew at the time that the video had been edited and that the editors had an agenda. All but a fool would have rejected it as being of no value for diagnosis. Additionally, making a diagnosis of a condition out of his field of expertise was not very bright, and doing it without ever actually seeing the person in question was just stupid.

All in all, he presented himself as an ass of the first order.
 

GroundedSailor

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Here's an interesting blog on The Nation magazine. The writer brings up a perspective that I was not aware of but does not seem surprising.

It is too bad that outgoing Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tennessee, had decided not to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2OO6.

It would have been entertaining to watch this sorry excuse for a senator try and explain a political journey that deadended when the physician-turned-legislator diagnosed brain-damaged Terry Schiavo via videotape -- producing an assessment of her condition that completely contradicted that of doctors who had actually examined her.

The storm that followed his intervention in the Schiavo case represented the only instance in which most Americans actually noticed that Frist was one of the nation's most powerful political leaders.

After a number of earlier missteps, Frist had tended to avoid the limelight because he never did very well when he was in it --as the Schiavo fiasco so potently illustrated -- and because his primary purpose in the Senate, that of enriching his already wealthy family, was not exactly the sort of thing that politicians brag about.

The wealthy doctor ran for the Senate in 1994 with a simple mission: to prevent health care reforms that might pose a threat to his family's stake in Columbia/HCA, the nation's leading owner of hospitals. There was never going to be anything honorable about his service, but nothing all that embarrassing in a Washington that welcomes self-serving senators with open arms.

For almost a decade, Frist was a comfortably forgettable legislator -- a good hair, good suit, bad politics man of the Senate. Then, former Senate Majority Leader and soon-to-be Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott, R-Mississippi, went all segregationist at States Rights Party presidential candidate Strom Thurmond's going-away party in 2002. The Bush administration needed another prissy southerner to ride herd on the Senate. Frist fit the bill, moved into the nice office and became a comfortably forgettable Senate Majority Leader.

With the Republican-controlled Congress rendered irrelevant by its complete subservience to the Bush administration's political agenda, Frist quietly went back to the business of protecting the family business.

Things got seriously dicey for Frist only in the presidential election year of 2OO4, when the Bush administration found itself short on defenders. Everyone seemed to be turning state's evidence on the president. The ex-Secretary of the Treasury, the former Senior Director for Combating Terrorism on the National Security Council Staff and, now, the former counterterrorism chief in the Bush and Clinton White Houses had all come forward to suggest that Bush and Vice President Cheney really had missed the point of the war of terrorism -- badly. Suddenly, Americans were waking up to the fact that the rest of the world already knew: Iraq was not tied to al-Qaeda, had no weapons of mass destruction and posed no serious threat to the United States or its neighbors at the time that the administration committed this country to the course of quagmire.

The administration had few credible spokespeople left. The White House couldn't send Bush out in his "Mission Accomplished" flight suit. Vice President Dick Cheney was still trying to explain that Halliburton really hadn't set new standards for war profiteering. And then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice was having a very hard time explaining that she really, really, really did know what al-Qaeda was before counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke explained it to her.

The administration needed a Spiro Agnew to go out and start calling people names. And Bill Frist became, for a brief but not exactly shining moment in the spring of 2OO4, the White House's defender-in-chief.

The majority leader took to the floor of the Senate to denounce Clarke. "Mr. Clarke makes the outrageous charge that the Bush Administration, in its first seven months in office, failed to adequately address the threat posed by Osama bin Laden," Frist began. "I am troubled by these charges. I am equally troubled that someone would sell a book, trading on their former service as a government insider with access to our nation's most valuable intelligence, in order to profit from the suffering that this nation endured on September 11, 2001."

That was rich, considering the fact that Frist's Senate service had been about nothing so much as profiting from the suffering of the nation. By blocking needed health care reforms, pushing for tort reforms that would limit malpractice payouts and supporting moves to privatize Medicare, Frist pumped up his family's fortunes at the expense of Americans who lacked access to health care. As Mother Jones explained, "Some companies hire lobbyists to work Congress. Some have their executives lobby directly. But Tennessee's Frist family, the founders of Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp., the nation's largest hospital conglomerate, has taken it a step further: They sent an heir to the Senate. And there, with disturbingly little controversy, Republican Sen. Bill Frist has co-sponsored bills that may allow his family's company to profit from the ongoing privatization of Medicare."

The Frists fared well during the senator's two terms. An $800-million stake in HCA that his father and brother had at the time Frist was elected in 1994 shot up in value over the decade that followed. Frist's brother, Thomas, rose steadily on the Forbes magazine list of the world's richest people in recent years. In 2003, Forbes estimated that Thomas Frist Jr. was worth $1.5 billion. According to Forbes: "source: health care."

So Bill Frist certainly knew a thing or two about profiteering from human misery.

Of course, when he attacked Clarke, Frist wasn't really concerned about September 11 suffering. He was simply looking for any way to discredit one of the few members of the Bush administration who had tried to take terrorist threats seriously. The problem with Frist's attack was that Clarke had already made a commitment to donate substantial portions of the earnings from his book, "Against All Enemies," to the families of the 9/11 dead and to the widows and orphans of Special Forces troops who died in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Oops.

Frist didn't just come off as a hypocrite, he looked like a fool. But he looked like an even bigger fool when, in an attempt to claim Clarke had lied to Congress, Frist demanded that transcripts of Clarke' 2002 congressional testimony to be declassified. Clarke's response? "I would welcome it being declassified But not just a little line here and there -- let's declassify all six hours of my testimony." Then, Clarke added, "Let's declassify that memo I sent on January 25. And let's declassify the national security directive that Dr. Rice's committee approved nine months later, on September 4. And let's see if there's any difference between those two, because there isn't. Let's go further. The White House is now selectively finding my e-mails, which I would have assumed are covered by some privacy regulations, and selectively leaking them to the press. Let's take all of my e-mails and memos that I sent to the national security adviser and her deputy from January 20 to September 11, and let's declassify all of it."

Suitably shot down, Frist then took to defending Condoleezza Rice's refusal to testify in public and under oath before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United State -- only to have the administration decide to have her testify.

It was at that point that Frist began to recognize that he was not exactly ready for the political primetime.

Before the Clarke catastrophe, there had been talk that Frist might replace Dick Cheney if the Bush political team decided to force the vice president off the 2004 ticket -- an admittedly dubious prospect, as Cheney remained firmly in charge both of the policy and political operations at the White House. After Frist's flip out, however, even Republican loyalists started asking whether the senator was good for anything other than taking care of the family's health care investments.

A year later, with his Schiavo diagnosis, whatever credibility his medical degree might have given Frist was gone.

When he decided not to seek reelection in 2OO6, no one was surprised, or particularly upset.

When he decided not to seek the party's presidential nomination in 2OO8, Republicans breathed a sigh of relief.

After 12 years of political malpractice, Dr. Frist is retiring to the obscurity he so richly deserves -- unless, of course, ethics investigators take an interest in how his family's fortunes rose during an otherwise undistinguished Senate tenure.

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=144105