A group of Guam medical doctors are trying to convince Dr. Hoa Nguyen to run for senator.
Dr. Nguyen is the outspoken part owner of American Medical Center, which has been at the forefront of medical missions for the poor and the disadvantaged for years.
“I really have to think and pray about it,” he said, noting he does not want his patients to suffer any inconvenience if he were to take on the role of a senator if elected.
He would not be the first doctor to carry on a life of elected public service while maintaining his medical practice. The late Dr. Ernesto Espaldon served several years in the Guam Legislature until the 1990s. Later that decade, voters elected the late Dr. Eduardo Cruz. In 2004, Guam Memorial Hospital medical director Dr. Michael Cruz was elected to the legislature, and two years later became the lieutenant governor.
It was under Dr. Cruz’s leadership together with then-Governor Felix Camacho that GMH gained accreditation two decades after it lost the important designation. GMH would end up losing that brand of accreditation after Camacho and Cruz left office, and has not since been able to regain it.
Like Dr. Cruz, Dr. Nguyen is a military veteran. His story of citizenship is interesting. He came to Guam following the fall of Saigon as a refugee. He then joined the U.S. military. And when it came time for him to decide where to live in America, he chose Guam. He’s been here since.
Dr. Nguyen has been a vocal critic of the Leon Guerrero administration, often calling for drastic reform in its health policies and the management of GMH. And though his new clinic in Mangilao is in a position to benefit from Lou Leon Guerrero’s desire to build the new hospital down the road from him, he has advocated for the facility to be built at Ypao Point.
His peer, Dr. Thomas Shieh – perhaps the most outspoken of Guam’s medical community – is among those pushing for Dr. Nguyen’s candidacy.
“We are drafting Dr. Hoa,” he said. A petition to draft him is circulating. The petition lists his political party as republican, further increasing the odds that republicans will retake the legislature after a two-decade hiatus, and possibly with a super majority.
