President Barack Obama has nominated a rural doctor from Gulf Coast Alabama to be the nation's next Surgeon General. Dr. Regina Benjamin (above with the President) is a rural Alabama family physician who operates a nonprofit medical clinic along the Gulf Coast, makes house calls and accepts every patient who comes to her door. Benjamin is 51 and lives in the shrimping community of Bayou La Batre. She became the first black woman and the first doctor under age 40 elected to the American Medical Association's board of trustees, and in 2002 became the first black woman to head a state medical society.

Dr. Benjamin saw her clinic destroyed by Hurricane Katrina and, once it was rebuilt by volunteers, watched it destroyed by fire. She rebuilt the clinic, telling the story of a patient who handed her an envelop containing $7 for the effort. "If she can find $7, I can figure out the rest," Dr. Benjamin said. Benjamin received $500,000 in a MacArthur Foundation "genius award" that she used to help rebuild the facility. She must be confirmed by the Senate. She is the highest-ranking rural resident in the Obama administration. 

A Missourian takes the pulse of citizens on health care issues, gazes south of the border, and routes the results to Washington, D.C.

Rural men and women are more likely to be pulling the night shift than are urban workers. So finds a new study from the Carsey Institute, at University of New Hampshire.

Sociologist Rogelio Saenz studied when workers, metro and non-metro, arrived at the job. He found that rural people were over-represented in non-traditional shifts; a higher ratio of rural workers clocked in after noon and before 6 a.m.

Saenz further found that white workers were proportionally most likely to be employed during the “traditional” work hours, whereas “those who tend to be more marginally tied to the labor force (persons of color, the foreign-born, those with English-speaking limitations, and the poor) tend to be more likely to work during the early morning, afternoon, and evening hours."

Saenz notes that people on second and third shifts may be deprived of “normal” social opportunities – like school activities and access to health care and day care.

There is also mounting evidence that night-shift workers have a greater incidence of cancer and other illnesses.

North Dakota Sen. Kent Conrad (above) is reaching into rural America's past to find a solution to the nation's health care problem. (Health care in this country costs too much, has only mediocre results and it leaves 45 million with no coverage at all.) Conrad  suggests creating health care co-ops to compete  with private insurers. "Mr. Conrad said his proposal stems from his experience with the rural electricity, farming and telephone co-ops in his state that are owned and run by members," according to the Wall Street Journal.

There aren't many details to the co-op scheme, although it is gaining favor among Senate Democrats. The notion is that the co-op would sell insurance to small businesses or individuals, who would then become part owners of the entity. These co-ops would negotiate rates and maybe even hire some of their own doctors.

There are those who don't think much of the idea. They point out that the Blue insurance companies started out as non-profits. Half of all people covered in the U.S. are in non-profit health plans, says another critic, yet there is no difference in prices. Another criticism might be that electric co-ops aren't always great for consumers either. The leaders of a large Texas rural electric cooperative were indicted for arranging payments of co-op money to relatives of co-op executives.