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Being a delegate to the Republican National Convention? That's nothing new for Sampat Shivangi, MD.

The psychiatrist from Ridgeland, Mississippi, is a fifth-time delegate to the event, which is mostly being held virtually this year. "I've been a Republican for a lot of years," Shivangi said in a phone interview. "I like the festivities; I enjoy meeting people and talking to the candidates, the congressmen and senators, and the press. You can see the wealth of knowledge you get." He is disappointed that the event won't be held in person for the most part. "We were looking forward to it -- being with like-minded people, discussing the issues."

Shivangi agreed with the Trump administration's desire to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. "Premiums are so high; people have to pay thousands of dollars before they get any benefits, and how can they afford that?" he said. On the other hand, "we don't want Medicare for everybody; that will bankrupt the country." Shivangi expressed concern that if former vice president Joe Biden is elected, even though he himself is not in favor of Medicare for All, more left-leaning forces in the party "might force him to go in that direction. We don't know what's going to happen."

Shivangi said he would favor finding a way for private insurers to cover more people, including for higher-cost treatments. "We have the best healthcare system in the world; why would you want to change it?" He said that in Canada and England, patients sometimes have to wait "6 months to a year" for some types of surgery. "I don't think anyone would want to do that."

As a psychiatrist, Shivangi is concerned about the mental health toll that the COVID-19 pandemic is taking on the country. "The incidence of mental illness in Mississippi has gone up 20% to 30%, and alcoholism is up 30% to 40% in some states," he said. "That's how we're paying the price for COVID."

Shivangi acknowledged that many people don't think Trump is handling the pandemic very well, "even though he stopped flights from China and Europe" in an effort to prevent the disease from spreading to the U.S., Shivangi said he thought the president had done a "fairly good" job with the pandemic, noting that Trump is "dumping billions and billions of dollars to see if we can get vaccination before the elections. If a vaccination comes before the elections, he will be a winner." Shivangi predicted it would happen "in the next 30 days, much before the election."

Shivangi, who is Indian-American, is very involved with the Indian-American physician community and is active with the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin. However, he is not a fan of Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), whose mother was from India and whose father was Black and from Jamaica. "In reality, she is not an Indian-American, neither does she claim to be one, as she identifies herself as an African American or Black American," he wrote in an Aug. 13 for American Kahani, a website whose subtitle is "Indian Americans Through the Looking Glass." "Her father is Jamaican and that counts legally."

"Harris's Indianness is very debatable," Shivangi continued. "There are many controversial stories about her grandfather participating in India's independence movement or if he was just a civil servant in the British Raj; if she really spent time with her grandfather in Chennai in early childhood and his influence on her political leadership."

Another physician who relished being part of a previous convention is Sandra Yeh, MD, an ophthalmologist in Springfield, Illinois, who was a delegate for Trump in 2016. She said in a phone interview that she liked the fact that Trump is really a "blue-collar billionaire; most of his day spent with concrete workers, plumbers and electricians, that's his day. He's a builder, he builds buildings. That's what media missed about him; he is the common man, he's somebody's buddy drinking at a bar and mouthing off. I'd rather hear a poorly spoken truth than a well-spoken lie. I felt that he spoke for the common man."

"This has been a very hard year -- we have a pandemic, we have riots, you name it," said Yeh. "It has been the most catastrophic year for people and for business. I think through all of it, he has done his best. I don't think anybody has been prepared -- no country came out of this unscathed ... I still think he's the best candidate."

As for the pandemic, "in retrospect, now that we know what we know, if we just masked and did social distancing, did everything really have to close?" Yeh said. Noting that at least in her part of the country, deaths from the virus have been more common among the elderly, she added, "now that we know more and it's going to a healthier bunch of people, I think there's a herd immunity ... Viruses have always been with us. Unfortunately, it takes the elderly and the weak and leaves the rest of us stronger to live to fight another day. I'm hoping for a vaccine, and I think it will come."

Yeh said that despite the bad economy, "my office is teeming with patients. We're booked solid for months in advance." She recently added a new doctor to her practice, "and I took him to see optometric places, and every optometric shop in the city of Springfield was packed. At least in middle America, it really didn't hit as bad. We have to start distinguishing how the media portrays our country and how it really is."

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