My undergraduate degree was in Economics (with honors) in 1968. I earned my M.D. degree at the University of Minnesota in 1972 and then did a three year residency there in Pediatrics. I then did a fellowship in Pediatric Lung Disease at the Webb-Waring Lung Institute at the University of Colorado. I was an Assistant Professor there until 1982 when I accepted a faculty position at Harvard Medical School and the Boston Children’s Hospital. In 1986 I left Harvard to go back to Minneapolis to start an Intensive Care Unit and Lung Disease program at the Children’s Hospital there. In 1989 I came to San Jose, California, in Silicon Valley, which was the 11^th largest city in the U.S. and the only one of the 50 largest cities in the U.S. with no Children’s Hospital. I was able to start a children’s ICU and lung disease program there in a large private hospital while I worked to develop a Children’s Hospital in San Jose. We started a foundation to pursue that goal and many good people worked toward it. Sadly, we never managed to reach that goal and the 2008 economic crash made fundraising too difficult to keep that foundation going.

In 2005, as I saw health care becoming more and more regulated and the pervasive influence of regulations and politics on healthcare, I decided to go back to school, to law school at Santa Clara University. There I learned how law really works and met many great people, professors and fellow students. It was a lot of fun. Fortunately, they had a night school program and I was able to keep up with my medical practice too. I got my J.D. degree at SCU in 2008.

My current interest is working with some of my Silicon Valley friends on a website where consumers can shop for doctors, dentists, surgical procedures, even veterinary care. Sort of like Amazon for health care. I predict that the health plans that we have now will be obsolete in 10-15 years, replaced by internet-based plans and systems that will provide more choices with lower prices and better quality. These markets and plans will serve everyone, whether they get their coverage through their employer, Medicare, MediCal, or veteran’s benefits.

So, with all this, why am I running for Congress? The answer is that, without fiscal reform at the federal level, the health care system is going to crash, along with the rest of the economy. Running for Congress gives me a platform to talk about these problems. However, since Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one in this congressional district, I think I am going to keep working on my website too. Thanks for your time, interest, and support.

Dr. Fox’s Priorities:

1.         Fix Healthcare: Low-Deductible Private Healthcare For All Through Private Markets 

2.         Fix The Economy: End Crony Socialism/Capitalism, Cap Spending & Debt, Cut Taxes & Regulations To Grow The Economy, Opportunity, Good Jobs, Dignity, & Hope For Millennials, Young Families 

3.         Promote Inclusiveness, Civility, & Respect: America Is For All Americans, All Ages, All Incomes, All Races, All Ethnicities, All Faiths, All Genders, All Orientations

4.         Stop Domestic Violence

Federal spending and borrowing are way too high, like a morbidly obese patient that cannot stop eating. The debt and the borrowing are stagnating our economy and it will crash sooner or later, probably sooner. It’s time for the feds to get on a diet because it only gets harder the more weight, and debt, that you put on. We had wake-up calls in 2000 and again in 2008 but each time we just doubled down on the spending and borrowing so that no one went hungry and no one lost weight. But, we can’t spend and borrow, or eat, our way to health. And, there won’t be anything left to feed the kids.

It’s the debt that is killing our economy, not immigration or trade deals, those are just scapegoats. When the crash comes, it’s not going to do any good to blame immigrants or the Chinese.  That will just be an excuse to duck the real problem, our own overspending.  Angry fingerpointing at immigrants or the Chinese won’t fix the problem.  

It’s time to start that diet before it is too late. I know what I am talking about because, as a physician, I have treated the morbidly obese in the ICU, and it usually ends badly.  In fact, where a healthy Body Mass Index is 20 to 25, mortality rates approximately double for every 5 points BMI goes above 25. So, if it goes above 40, which is morbidly obese, mortality goes way up. That is where our spending and borrowing are. Our debt has doubled under Obama and the Democrats have no clue as to how to solve it. More taxes won’t solve the problem because that just leads to more overeating, not to a healthy weight. Just like there is a healthy weight for people, there is a healthy size for government. The one we have now is too obese. Our national debt is nearly the size of our entire economy and projected to skyrocket for as far as the eye can see. The off-the-books debt, mainly entitlements promised but unfunded, are much worse. Everyone knows that this can’t go on forever, and it won’t. There will be a much worse crash. The alternative is to get started on that diet.

The good news is that, as the weight comes off, the patient gets a lot healthier. The economy will pick up for everyone except the big spenders in government. We will have something to leave for our kids besides a broken-down, debt-ridden government like some we see if we look around.