No longer would I be a businessman who squeezed in some medical consulting between meetings. From now on, I realized, I had to devote the bulk of my day to medical advocacy
Most kids grow up with a rosy picture of the medical world: Someone gets sick. He visits the doctor. The doctor prescribes the right medicine, or performs the right procedure, and the patient lives happily ever after.
I was just 17 years old when I got my first inkling that things aren’t quite that simple.
I was always an out-of-the-box thinker, someone who did things my own way. I was born in Belgium and grew up in Tel Aviv, a background that expanded my horizons and afforded me knowledge of different cultures and lifestyles. I learned in Ponevezh and was still in my twenties when I got my first job as assistant to then-health minister of Israel Tzachi Hanegbi.
When I was just 22 years old, my uncle, the Rebbe of Pinsk-Karlin, required open-heart surgery. Back then it was considered very intimidating, and the entire family was almost paralyzed with fear. I went to visit him, and he told me, “Yossi, I want you to take care of this. You’re going to be the one to research all the options and find the best hospital and doctor for my surgery.”
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