Dr. Don J. Tynes considers himself a dinosaur.As a private practice physician working in impoverished Benton Harbor, many of Tynes' patients are poor and uninsured, and every week is a struggle for him to keep the doors of his cramped office at 687 E. Empire Ave. open.Working for a medical group or hospital would improve the physician's job security, but he said it would compromise his mission of putting patients before profits.Tynes, 51, was born in New York City and bounced between New York and Mantachie, Miss., while growing up, before moving to Detroit and eventually settling in Benton Harbor.He grew up wanting to be a veterinarian but vowed to become a doctor after witnessing the poor care his grandmother received in Harlem before her death. Tynes opened his practice in Benton Harbor in 2004 after spending a few years working for the Intercare Health Network.In his spare time, Tynes, a husband and father of seven, oversees the youth division of the NAACP's Benton Harbor branch and helps run a new youth group called Kick the Peace: Stop the Nonsense: Crush the Violence. The group will offer arts, entertainment and sports for youths at Broadway and Hull parks on Monday and Thursday evenings beginning this week.On a typically busy day at his office last week, with his 13-month-old daughter, Nia, on his lap, Tynes took a break to speak with Herald-Palladium reporter Evan Goodenow on his life, "Obamacare" and how capitalism and medicine don't mix.What interested you in medicine?I saw the movie with Rex Harrison, "Dr. Dolittle," and then I knew I wanted to be a veterinarian and try to treat the animals of the world, and then my experience in Harlem and the death of my grandmother, I made her a promise that if I was to ever make it out of Harlem, I would try to become a doctor who would take care of anybody who walked off the streets. I didn't like seeing how people were helpless when it came to medicine and not knowing what to do. I wanted the people to feel empowered and not feel helpless.What I've learned are three major points. What I've found is that physicians take an oath to protect patients, businessmen take an oath to protect profits. Businessmen have to protect the stockholders, where physicians have to protect the baby-holders. … Businessmen see numbers. Physicians see patients. … But now we're asked not to do that anymore. We're asked just to get people in and out so that you can generate and increase profit margins, and that's what a lot of physicians are rebelling against.So you don't feel like it (the new health care law) is going to be good?No. … The middle class of America is disappearing, and you just have an upper class and a lower class, and health care is going in the same (direction). There's not going to be middle ground. You have access, but you have limited quality of care. They'll use benchmarks which have you waiting and sitting on the bench hoping for the best.It's like a heart doctor says, 'I'm not going to pay attention to your infected foot because it's not my specialty,' and then the person winds up having to get it cut off. That's the kind of medicine that we're headed towards.Some of the physicians, and I'll say this boldly, who cannot make it in private practice, they go into managed care and what they do in managed care is that they become medical directors who sit on the boards.But in (my) practice, what we do is that, if you really need it, we take out the time and do it regardless. So as a result we generate less income. … Here, we don't judge. We just love. We'll order the same tests as if they were President Obama or Willie the wino or Joe the dope fiend.The for-profit health care system, combining that with the worst recession ever and Benton Harbor having decades of poverty, has it been hard to make a go of it?The only reason I'm even able to stay open is through God's grace, because we don't know if we're going to make payroll. I don't do a salary. I go without being paid to make sure that we are able to take in people. The most important thing is to pay the staff first and then pay our bills. … If there's anything left, then I will get paid.Obamacare is going to leave a lot of people without care because physicians can't keep doing like me where you keep losing on every patient you see and eventually have to close your doors.Would you have preferred to see a single-payer system where people pay through their paycheck and then I can come to you and you get reimbursed by the government? Sort of like Social Security or Medicare for all.That would be good if you had the heart and mind-set to go with that. That's the problem. If America were the America of the Roosevelt era then I would be jumping up and down in support of everything now. But the America now is corrupted by lobbyists, and everybody puts their profit before the people.

 

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