You're watching Southwest Florida in focus coming up.

The doctor is out.

Why.

An alarming number of physicians are walking away from patient care.

One southwest Floridian explains why she put down the scalpel.

Fewer voters turned out for this most recent presidential election compared to 2020.

Still, an elections expert tells us voter turnout numbers are actually encouraging.

We'll explain why.

And better mental health this new year, focusing on a happier and healthier mind in 2025.

Hello, I'm Sandra Victorova Thank you very much for joining us.

In just over two weeks, president elect Donald Trump returns to the white House.

According to the Associated Press, Trump won a bigger percentage of the vote in every state and received 2.5 million more votes than he did four years ago.

Even though voter turnout dropped nationally in Florida, nearly 67% of eligible voters cast a ballot in the 2024 election.

That's down from the previous presidential race, when nearly 71% of Floridians voted.

But one election's expert says despite the drop in turnout, voter engagement is encouraging.

Joining us now is Doctor Michael McDonald, a professor of political science at the University of Florida, where he conducts research on elections and polling methodology and the results of his research on voter turnout is used by media across the country.

Doctor McDonald, thank you so much for joining us.

Wonderful to be here.

So voter turnout this last election.

What did it look like and how did it compared to the previous election?

Well, we had 64% of those who were eligible to vote participate in this election.

It was down just slightly from the 66% that we had in the 2020 election.

And while that may be bad news in some ways, but it's actually very good news because those turnout rates, the 2020 election was the highest turnout rate election we've had for a presidential election since 1900.

And so we are still very much high, very much highly engaged electorate right now, even though we were down slightly from the 2020 election.

Why is that?

Why are we seeing those the voter turnout improve?

Generally speaking.

Well, which probably has something to do with Donald Trump, because after the 2016 election, we had the 2018 midterm election, that was the highest turnout rate election that we'd had for a midterm election since 1914.

So again, we have to go back 100 years to see that level of engagement and the 2020 elections highest since 1900.

The 22,022 election was down slightly, but it wasn't nearly down as much.

Back to the previous levels that we had before 2018.

And so again, in 2024, we get high turnout again.

So, this is at the time when Donald Trump is around on the political scene.

And so he inflames passions one way or another.

And that leads to people believing that the election matters and it leads them to engage in politics.

Pollsters keep telling us to pay attention to those swing states.

And I'm wondering, obviously, there were historic levels of, moneys, money in that state, in those states on advertising, right, to reach those voters.

Was that critical to the turnout in those swing states?

And what did the turnout look like?

Yeah.

Here's the curious thing about this election.

Usually when turnout rates go up or down, it's like we're on a boat together in the country and the boat rises or falls with, the whole country.

But in this election, something different happened.

And that was the five critical battleground states that everybody was talking about.

Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan.

Wisconsin.

What happened there was we actually saw turnout rates go up compared to 2020, even though everywhere else in the country we saw turnout rates going down.

And so something about how people in those states were consuming information.

They were being told that, you know, especially if you were in Pennsylvania, this was it.

Whoever wins Pennsylvania is going to win.

And so, those people believed that their votes mattered, and they actually showed up in higher numbers.

And it's going to be a curious thing that I imagine people are going to be exploring it over the next months and years to come to, to figure out why did turnout go down elsewhere, why were people less engaged elsewhere, even if we were seeing greater levels of engagement in these critical battleground states?

Why?

I know you are really passionate about your work with the Election Lab at the University of Florida.

Why is studying voter turnout specifically so important and and sharing that information with with the media?

Why is it important?

For me, I just believe in democracy.

I believe that the government should reflect the will of the people who are part of the citizenry of that government.

And the best way for people to express themselves is through voting.

I mean, that's the basic way.

That's the most common way that people engage with their government is through voting.

And so I've worked I've worked both for Democrats, Republicans.

I've worked on projects that will help Democratic aligned groups, Republican aligned groups.

I don't really care who I'm helping.

If it's going to help them to vote and engage and be participatory.

So, that's that's just my belief that that as a country and as a, things will function better when the government is, responsive to the people.

Doctor McDonald, thank you so much for your time.

We appreciate it.

Wonderful to be here with you.

Thank you.

Coming up next, a southwest Florida doctor explains why she and others are walking away from their practices, professions that cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans and more than a decade of studying.

Being a doctor has always been considered a noble and prestigious profession with a good paycheck.

But the American Medical Association issued a warning that about 1 in 5 U.S. physicians are leaving or scaling back patient care, according to data released more than two years ago.

Doctor Marianne Wilber, who lives in southwest Florida, is one of those doctors who walked away from patient care in her new book, The Doctor's No Longer in Conversations with US physicians.

She shares the reason why doctors are walking away.

Doctor Marianne Wilber joins us now.

Welcome, doctor.

Thank you.

So it is hard to imagine someone who would spend years building this career over $200,000, also building this career.

And what a lot of us see is a prestigious, you know, profession.

Why did you decide to put down the scalpel?

Yeah.

This is not the kind of decision that physicians take lightly.

I, I spent five years in undergrad, and then five years getting an MD, MPH, and then I spent another eight years, doing, you know, extremely long hours and training at Hopkins.

And then, I was only an attending gynecologist for four years.

I'm invested in terms of, yeah, money, time, motions, you name it.

But for me, I got to a point where it's not I missed my patients and I missed being a doctor every single day.

But it got to a point where I couldn't practice good medicine in the current context of U.S. health care, because of all of the constraints, most of them being money and time, which actually comes down to money.

And so we've got a such a problem in our system that the physicians are feeling pressured away from doing what they know to be right for the patient.

And for me, I got to a point where it was just absolutely untenable.

I heard you talk about this sense of feeling morally compromised, a lack of autonomy.

What did that look like for you and the physicians?

Because you've now interviewed a bunch of physicians who were just like you.

What does that look like?

It looks different for everybody, right?

Because every physician is a human.

And so whether what specialty and where you practice and what demographic you are, you know, it's going to affect things.

But for me, I'm a mom and I was a GI, an oncologist.

And so that meant that my patients would be referred to me.

The most common story was a woman is having some kind of irregular bleeding.

A primary care gyn.

Does an individual biopsy, identifies cancer, refers a patient to me.

So I meet them and I say, you know, I'm very sorry to hear about your cancer diagnosis.

It's, you know, in this, it's almost always endometrium cancer.

If it's a cancer of the uterus.

And so we usually are discussing hysterectomy, but it had gotten to the point where even a standard of care when the patient and I came to, okay, so we're going to plan a hysterectomy and you know, I would do like just what you would expect.

The standard of care according to the textbooks would be.

But the insurance companies are saying, why do you want to do that?

You really want to do that?

Do you want to do it differently?

And like, no, I don't I don't want to do it differently.

I want to do the standard of care.

And it got to the point where I, I really felt like I was either going to be able to look myself in the mirror.

Or keep operating.

And so I walked away.

We often hear doctors seeing about how limited, especially general practitioners, rate family physicians, how they feel pressured right, to get in those patients, I guess, within, what, 20 minutes?

Oh, if they're lucky, 20 minutes is a dream.

Wow.

No, no, no.

20 minute slots, but those are usually double or triple booked.

And then you have to document and then you have to do the mychart messages, and then you have to do the billing, and then you have to do all of the other things that are, you know, in the notes and the nurse came and asked you a question and, you know, so three, maybe two, three minutes, you say the big issue is that the dollar is at the center of the system and not the patient.

Yeah.

So, different countries handle health care differently, right?

In the US, the way that we created our health care system was actually backwards.

And it's just a mistake of history.

So, after right around time of World War two, a lot of medical, technologies came to be, you know, antibiotics, good anesthetics, quality imaging, a lot of things.

And all of a sudden, access to those things became important to the American public.

And what was happening during World War Two was a lot of men were off at war.

Women work in the factories, and they were getting pulled from factory to factory.

So the federal government said, there's a cap on salaries.

You can't pull a, you know, one, one woman from another.

So you can't challenge her salary.

So what would you offer to her to come to your factory?

But not challenge her salary?

Well, we know what she's worried about.

She's a mom, right?

She wants to make sure that her kids have access to those antibiotics if they need them and things like that.

So they offered health insurance.

And that's how it came to be.

The first people to do it was Blue Cross Blue Shield.

And it was really interesting.

I mean, I think it came from a, you know, not a bad place.

They were like, we'll set this up.

But nobody had really thought about how you would do this.

So they set it up the way that you would set up any other insurance.

So I usually liken it to flood insurance.

Right.

And so a lot of us around here have flood insurance.

And then the families who do suffer a flood, they in theory, get what they need to fix their house.

But that's all based on a gamble that not everybody's house is going to flood.

Right?

So now if you bring that back to health and health insurance, what are the chances that every human body is going to break down?

100%.

You know, the human body is mortal.

So this whole system was built with a fatal flaw put in.

But then to make it even worse, what we did was we said, okay, how are we going to pay for these services?

You know, what we're going to do?

We're going to put in a fee for service system, which is how you pay a mechanic.

Right?

So they do something, they charge you, they do something else, they charge you.

And between these two errors, we now have a system that is based around doctors doing things and either maybe trying to do things more than they should, or at the very least, the perception that your doctor is going to want to do more.

Right.

So the insurance companies accusing me of wanting to do a hysterectomy unnecessarily, am I probably not, but maybe.

But this insurance company definitely is going to think that I'm doing it.

So they put all of this staff into fighting me, and then my office has to put more staff into fighting them.

And this is now created a situation where between me and the patient who just had cancer and needs her uterus out, 17 people are now between me and the patient 17 salaries.

That is why our health care system is so bloated and so inefficient.

Doctor Wilbur, thank you for your time with us, and thank you for sharing your story and telling the story of so many other physicians.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

If you're like me every year, losing weight and getting more physically fit is at the top of the New Year's resolution list.

But what about improving our mental health as a goal this new year?

Today we talk about improving emotional well-being in 2025.

Here at In Focus, it's our resolution this new year to cover mental health more.

Joining us now is psychologist doctor Laura Ellik.

Doctor Elek, welcome.

Thanks for your time.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm so happy to be here.

So we were talking earlier, and we were talking about how there's five keys or five pillars to good mental health.

What are they and how do we work on them for this new year?

That's correct.

So I always instruct people on these five pillars that I consider to be pivotal for mental health.

And that would be your health, your career, your finances, your relationships, your family and your personal, which could be your habits, your hobbies, your friendships, the things that create meaning for you.

And so when any one of these is out of balance or out of whack, we can feel off.

So, for example, people who are really struggling with their finances will talk about feeling anxious and depressed.

And and it has an impact on the other four pillars as well.

So we really want to be looking at how close we can get to keeping these balance throughout the new year, knowing that every once in a while, one is going to be a little off as we're working on certain things.

How important is it to be realistic in setting these resolutions?

That's so interesting that you mentioned that I stopped using the term resolutions a long time ago.

I set the word intentions instead because resolution or goal, if if people set that hard phone boundary if they're struggling or they fall a little bit off the wagon, they feel that they've lost it and they just kind of give up.

So if you set more of an intention, like my intention for this year is to overall reach a little bit better or to exercise a little bit more, there's some flexibility there for when things go off track.

So it's less of an all or nothing kind of thing.

But I love it when people do that.

It really sets, sets and a theme for the year and sort of sets a tone for where you're going to go in 2025 or whatever else, whatever year is going on.

So we know there's a loneliness epidemic in this country.

So many of us struggle with that issue.

How do we combat that?

And is, you know, developing or meeting new people, developing new friendships, a part of the solution?

Well, I think one of the things that's really difficult is as we get older, our ability to interact with people becomes a lot more challenging.

So of course, when you're in school or on a college campus, you have your choice of people all around.

There are people in the cafeteria.

There are people in your classes.

As you get older, and especially as the kids get older, there's less and less opportunity to meet new people.

And even with this world that we're in, we're now.

Most of us are working at least part of the time, virtually.

I know, for example, in in the course of the day, I may not leave my house at all.

So the opportunities to meet someone and to create that connection that becomes reduced.

And so this is one of those things where people really have to start being intentional about how are you going to go about meeting new people.

And it's it's a big challenge in the world that we live in right now.

Give us a few ideas for how we work on that, on creating new relationships, new friendships.

So there are all kinds of interesting things that are coming out right now.

I recently have seen some people talking about the app Bumble, which was used for for years for dating.

They now have a section on Bumble where you pick.

I want to just look for, I think they name it actually a BFF, which I think is kind of cool.

So you can actually put information in to look for a friend who you might get matched with by location, by hobbies.

There's also meetup groups, which I haven't done, but I heard they're also really good, especially for people who are active.

Let's say you're looking for a new tennis partner because you moved somewhere and you don't know anyone.

It's a great way to make connections.

The other thing that I would say is maybe people need to take the bull by the horns.

So in my community, for example, there is a pool that hardly anybody uses.

And one of the things that I thought of the other day is, hey, the pool is free to the entire community.

What if I just passed around a message saying, let's have a happy hour at the pool and whoever wants to show up at 4:00 on this Friday show up and let's just meet people and have some fun.

So it's really thinking outside the box, especially with the way technology is developing so quickly.

Let's use that to our advantage as well.

Doctor, we appreciate those ideas.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you so much.

It was a pleasure.

Coming up, from college admissions to hurricane preparedness and the arts, I look at award winning, locally produced programing for your binge watching pleasure.

That's up next.

It's been a big year here at WGCU.

Not only did we launch Southwest Florida and focus, many of WGCUs radio and TV productions have won awards.

That includes three regional Emmy nominations, one of them, The Face of Immokalee.

It documents photographer Michel.

Trick is incredible.

Four and a half year journey in creating larger than life black and white portraits of Immokalee residents, giving a voice to a community often overlooked.

I want the viewer to look up close rather than gloss over an anonymous person, and I want people to actually put a face with an ideology.

When people hear a mockery in the news for read about it mockingly or hear it mentioned.

I want them to actually put a face.

I want them to think about when they were in traffic and they saw their face for market exhibit drive by.

And Dream School A Journey to Higher Education, follows the inspiring stories of six high school students working to earn a seat at America's top colleges.

What happens if they don't get a yes?

This documentary is aimed at helping students and parents better understand and navigate the college admissions process.

When I realized I got a B, it just felt like I ruined my future.

The pressure to perform is starting as early as elements school, and that pressure can be overwhelming.

I just had a full blown panic attack.

What parents don't understand now is that the competitive nature of college admissions is so much greater than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

And finally, after Ian, a WGCU News Hurricane special.

Not only did this production earn a Suncoast Emmy nomination, it brought home the gold statue in the category of Information and Instructional Content.

I think people just kept looking at that cold saying, what?

The corn's not here yet.

It's not here yet.

It's not here yet.

And then when the corn was finally here, which was only 36 to 48 hours in advance, people started thinking it was too late to go.

Joining me now is Pam James, executive producer of content for you and the executive producer of after.

Ian, welcome, Pam, and congratulations on your Emmy.

Thank you.

And it's not just Miami.

It's our entire teams.

Well, it's, something to be very proud of.

So congratulations.

So, as you know, many stations try to tackle storms, do storm specials.

What do you think was unique about this production?

I think our overall goal was to make sure that public, media was more represented in how we do after Ian.

I mean, some of the pillars of content for public media is, you know, arts environment, history.

And of course, you know, what's going on with public affairs and cultural affairs.

So I want to make sure that we had those kind of topics represented, throughout the whole story, throughout the entire documentary.

And we actually had a team that was capable of doing that.

I was going to ask you about the collaboration.

Obviously, we've got an incredible radio team and digital and TV.

How did that make a difference?

Well, as you said, we've got great, a very talented group of people and individuals who do radio, who do digital stories and are TV savvy.

Bringing in the radio and the digital people into the TV world was a little bit more challenging, but we had some professional videographers that could go out with them.

The best part is that these people are storytellers, so they just did what they did best by interviewing people, telling the stories, capturing the content, capturing the mood, capturing the the pathos, if you will, and then, letting the videographers and the editors put it all together.

So I know you worked so hard on this project.

A lot of great information for viewers.

What do you hope viewers will take away as far as how they respond to the next storm that comes?

Our ultimate goal for this entire documentary was to make sure people had the information about whether or not they should continue to stay, should the next storm, come.

And when I say should, it's going to happen.

So we really just wanted to provide as much information as possible so that people could be smart about it.

Knowing that they don't have to stay in place if they don't need to.

They can go to a shelter.

And while that's not convenient, that's better than, you know, losing a life or losing a loved one.

So our goal ultimately was to make sure that people had the information that they could use to make smart decisions.

I know you had the chance to talk to a lot of people who had to make some tough decisions, saw some very difficult things after the storm.

What sort of stays with you after being done with this project?

Completing it?

You know, the resiliency of Southwest Floridians is very strong.

And, you know, whether they're from Pine Island or they're from Fort Myers Beach or just up the houchi River, they a lot of them have lived through several storms, and they are bound and determined to stay where they're at or rebuild where they're at.

So I think that's the most important part.

The challenge will be in the future as the storms become stronger and the surge becomes more stronger, where the people will be able to do that and stay in rebuild because it's just going to be financially, difficult.

Pam, thank you for your hard work on this project.

And congratulations again.

Again, I extend that great congratulations to our entire team because it really made it the difference.

All right.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

And as we end today, a story about new beginnings this new year.

An incredible surprise for a single mom in North Fort Myers.

Builders care, the charitable arm of the Lee Building Industry Association and Lennar Homes, had promised Erica Tag, the mother of three, a remodel of her kitchen.

Instead, she got a much bigger surprise during the holidays a complete renovation of her entire home.

had a dishwasher before.

this is the best Christmas ever.

I was excited to get a kitchen because I love to cook and bake.

I'm so grateful that, you know, we've spoken so much with people and they learn so much about my family, and they really did hit the nail on the head.

For the first time in years tag will now get her own bedroom.

Good for her.

Coming up next week on Southwest Florida in Focus, a series of game changing donations.

We visit philanthropist Tom Golisano at his Collier County home after he gifted $85 million to multiple organizations throughout the area.

Be sure to join us for that story and much more on WGCU.

Until then, have a great week!