Doctor Cites Family History in His Tobacco Initiative Fight

As a physician, J. Brennan Cassidy became accustomed to making tough life-and-death decisions during stints in Vietnam and Nicaragua.

But the 58-year-old doctor has regretted his decision, or at least given second thoughts, about his involvement with Measure H, the initiative that resulted in a political battle between Cassidy and other health care leaders and county supervisors over how millions of dollars in tobacco settlement money should be spent.

“Well, I guess no one put a gun to my head, but I never expected the Board of Supervisors to ever sue me either,” Cassidy said.

Cassidy found himself taking center stage when he was sued by the county, first to prevent Measure H from going on the ballot, and then to block its implementation after it was approved by 65% of voters in the November election.

The ballot measure mandated that most of the $750 million in tobacco settlement funds the county will receive over the next 25 years be spent on health care, not on bankruptcy debt and jail beds, as a board majority had wanted.

Cassidy comes from a long line of physicians--his father, grandfather and great-grandfather--all, like him, born in Kentucky.

After medical school at the University of Kentucky, he interned at UCI Medical Center, which was then called the Orange County Medical Center. While in the Navy, he was stationed at bases in Alameda, San Francisco and again Orange County, where he moonlighted in the emergency room at Anaheim Memorial Hospital.

Smitten with the warm climate and proximity to the beaches, Cassidy returned after military duty.

In the early ‘70s, he worked in Newport Beach and later helped organize an association that won the first contract for emergency room physicians at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach.

He was still working in the emergency room in 1981 when he got the idea of a walk-in clinic and started an urgent care center in Costa Mesa.

The idea was a success and Cassidy now owns six Family Care Centers throughout the county.

He has always been a member of the county’s medical association, he says, because it’s a responsibility, given his family’s medical legacy. “I take it seriously because it’s got a lot to do with why I got into the medical field.”

In recent years he has focused on legislative issues affecting the medical community.

The Measure H fight, Cassidy said, was prompted only after the three majority board members, Cynthia P. Coad, Chuck Smith and Jim Silva, could not be persuaded to spend more money on health care.