The President's Pulse/No Way to Treat a President
Schwartz, Harry
reminding them to be socially concerned. Nonsense. The circus atmosphere of the Live Aid concerts makes the world's problems seem easy and fun to solve and implies that the solutions are...
...Big corporations donate their services which are worth little enough...
...But civilians--veterans and members of the families of people belonging to the armed forces--who are treated by military medical personnel can sue...
...That is nonsense, as the American Cancer Society has pointed out...
...Reagan's skin cancer raised new questions about the quality and the candor of the ~ocialized medicine he was getserving their patients...
...And none of the doctors around him was courageous enough to insist the President act on the information...
...Reagan went home, the whole business taking only a few afternoon hours...
...New York Governor Mario Cuomo publicly denounced THE WANDERER after it published several articles exposing the inevitable conflict he was going to have with the Church -- articles that first appeared in THE WANDERER a full year before that conflict became a national story...
...Reagan must have been favorably impressed a year or two ago when Bethesda doctors found a bump in Mrs...
...During the days following the President's operation, his spokesman told reporters that neither the President nor his wife had any idea last March that polyps and blood in the stool might have any relationship to cancer...
...Every doctor of any merit knows that American Cancer Society guidelines are aimed at an average person and are framed with one eye on the need for cost containment...
...As he hinted in his radio speech just before he left Bethesda, he had deliberately pushed out of his mind the news about polyps and blood in his stool, thus obtaining internal ease at the price of delaying the needed investigation for months...
...According to news reports, Dr...
...Yuri's case, sometimes the best medical care in Russia comes from one of the underpaid physicians in the general medical system whose knowledge is great but whose politics are considered unreliable...
...One more thing, the music's lousy...
...28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1985Ultimately the responsibility is Mr...
...Last April, for example, a woman whose cancer went undiagnosed for a year and a half at Bethesda Naval Hospital was awarded $I million...
...Colon cancer is one of the most frequent killers of elderly Americans...
...President Reagan is now 74, an age at which cancer strikes many people...
...Officials at the New Jersey hospital said his full records had been sent to the Navy, but that didn't prevent Dr...
...One of them was commander of Bethesda Naval Hospital when Billig was hired, and subsequently became second in command of the Navy medical establishment until the Billig scandal caused his reassignment...
...Reagan against one another than they are with would have gotten his colonoscopy and his surgery last March...
...Three Important New Books From University Press o[ America Global Dilemmas Edited by Samuel P. Huntington and Joseph Nye, Jr...
...A few days later the Pentagon announced an "unprecedented decision" to hire civilian doctors to review the quality of care provided by the military medical establishment...
...Then they suddenly stopped appearing...
...If he had really anticipated he might have cancer we can assume he is sensible enough that, like President Dwight Eisenhower, he would have asked for one or more topflight civilian academic surgeons to be in on his operation, and he might have chosen a major civilian medical center for his treatment...
...Billig from getting his Navy job...
...In December, 1983, NEWSWEEK magazine blamed the Vatican investigations of Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen and Richmond, Virginia Bishop Walter Sullivan on THE WANDERER...
...Moreover, Dr...
...Meanwhile we ought to use the fumbles in the Reagan encounter with military medicine as prods to improve that medicine for all it serves, especially our soldiers, sailors, and marines...
...But a neurosurgeon as a primary physician treating colds and doing routine checkups...
...IF YOU'RE INTERESTED IN A CATHOLIC JOURNAL THAT DOESN'T APOLOGIZE FOR THE HISTORICAL TEACHINGS OF THE FAITH...
...And when they found another polyp and blood in the stool last March, the election was still only a few months past and they remembered how much emphasis Reagan had placed upon his good physical condition in arguing for votes...
...Undoubtedly Bethesda gave the President the best doctors and service it could provide...
...Billig never won the credentials necessary to do independent open heart surgery, and the adequacy of his eyesight was under serious question...
...They get much poorer service than the President got, and we know from the scandal surrounding the handling of the survivors of the explosion that blew up the Marine barracks in Beirut that the major military medical services may be more c.oncerned with their rivalries the American people, Mr...
...I think we can now conclude that Mr...
...Divided into three parts, Ethics and Politics in Foreign Policymaking, Security Dilemmas of the Nuclear Age and The Interplay of Economics and Politics in Industrial Democracies, this volume includes contributions from: Robert D. Putnam, Richard Cooper, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Michael Nacht, Paul M. Dory, Sidney Verba, Gary Orren, Douglas A. Hibbs, and Elliot Feldman...
...And not just audibly...
...In that capacity i met and sometimes became friendly with individual Soviet journalists, especially one whom I shall call Yuri here...
...Just last July, for example, two great changes were introduced...
...So why did Ronald Reagan, who used to tour the country making speeches denouncing Socialized Medicine, decide to use the socialized military medical system one of whose prime incarnations is the Bethesda Naval Hospital...
...August 1985, 320 pages, LC: 85-7374 Cloth, 4525-4 $24.95 The Essential Antifederalist Edited by Gordon Lloyd and W.B...
...These LP's, performances, and multiform by-products have nothing in common with charity...
...Presumably the President, as a federal employee, has health insurance which paid the hospital bill as well as any physicians' tees he may have been charged...
...So I was surprised one day to get a call from Yuri...
...Yet the American citizen about whose health the government is supposed to be most concerned, the President, did not get such an examination...
...The growing difficulties between the Holy Father and the Amedcan Episcopate were given a Catholic focus in ground-breaking interviews in THE WANDERER with members of the Roman Curia -- Silvio Cardinal Oddi, then-Archbishop Eduoard Gagnon, and Archbishop Jose Castillo tara .- which were so frank and comprehenslve that the leadership of the U.S...
...The Live Aid performers are sacrificing nothing...
...THE WANDERER's Investigation of New York City Executive Order 50 predicted the confrontation between Mayor Edward Koch and Archbishop john O'Connor a full six weeks before it actually took place, and burst onto the front pages of THE NEW YORK TIMES...
...3 o . . . . , . . . . , , . . , . # , . . . . , . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . # . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , , , . . . . . , , , . , , . ~ . . . . . ~ , . . . ,, ~ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - - . . . . :.: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . THE PRESIDENT'S PULSE...
...Because of s series of articles exposing the errors and pap in the heretical catechism CHRIST AMONG US, a number of "church" sources blamed THE WANDERER for the Vatican's formal condemnation of that book...
...At the moment the conclusion must be that socialized military medicine is at least as bad as propagandist Ronald Reagan used to predict socialized medicine would be when he preached THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1985 against it in the interests of the private civilian doctors of the country...
...Only after Bethesda was reorganized and some key personnel were reassigned did it regain full accreditation in 1983...
...I f we must save the world with a song, what's the matter with the Metropolitan Opera Company...
...The worst nineteenthcentury robber barons wouldn't have had the cheek to put forward such a bunco scheme...
...It is virtually certain that the reason the neurosurgeon was chosen is that he had once been the partner of Mrs...
...The Presidential Suite at Bethesda Naval Hospital, I read, costs $450 a day, a sum less than the single room rate at several New York City hospitals...
...IF YOU WANT TO KNOW THE REAL STORY OF WHA T'S HAPPENING IN THE CHURCH IN AMERICA AND THROUGHOUT THE WORLD, THEN IT'S TIME YOU SUBSCRIBED...
...Reagan went to Bethesda because he was confident nothing serious would be found, and that the world would be given another medical testimonial to his good health and high vigor at age 74...
...But the President of the United States has a very different relationship with his military doctors than an ordinary citizen has with a fee-for-service physician...
...Since 1867, its forceful and lively defense of Catholic truth has won a solid reputation for orthodoxy from friend and foe alike...
...The idea boggles the mind...
...But to use this doctor, Yuri had had to get care in the dismal surroundings available for ordinary Soviet citizens without any of the luxurious ambience of the elite medical system...
...The bump was surgically explored, material was taken for a biopsy, and the sample was examined by a pathologist who found it normal...
...He was in New York and asked if we could get together...
...Yuri is now long since dead...
...My puzzlement grew as I recalled that earlier this past summer there had been an unusual amount of publicity about the military medical system, almost all of it bad...
...In May 1984, for example, the President's military doctors knew that while they had to announce they had found a polyp, it would be disastrous for the President politically for any of them to suggest that it should be investigated further on the chance the President might have cancer...
...They may have given away tainted money, but at least they didn't ask you to give away yours...
...During the years of his presidency, millions of Americans in Mr...
...his articles appeared frequently...
...And he told me something he shouldn't have: that the doctors who serve the Soviet elite are picked more for their political soundness than for their medical skills...
...One doctor claims he did suggest colonoscopy then, but if he did, he certainly didn't persist very hard or go public with his recommendation...
...The military doctor serving the President during normal times wants to please his patient, too, but his patient is his Commander in Chief, with all the power that implies...
...But good medical care for the President of the United States--especially when he is in his seventies--requires a far higher index of suspicion and readiness to investigate possible problems than civilian physicians need to apply to younger patients...
...According to the Washington Post, Billig failed an eye examination for the Air Force before he applied to the Navy...
...Any religious person-whether he worships at a pile of gazelle bones or in the Cathedral of St...
...There were earlier signs his entire colon should be looked at...
...Paul, MN 55107 II i I | Please enter my name for El a year's ($25.00) Et six II | month's ($13.00) subscription to The Wanderer...
...If you're President of the United States, lots of things about military medicine must be pleasant...
...As an example of charity, Live Aid couldn't be worse...
...Reagan's father...
...The lust for power that destroys the benighted Ethiope has the same fountainhead as the lust for fame that propels the lousy pop band...
...Then there is the astonishing case of Navy Commander Donald M. Billig, M.D., former chief of cardiovascular surgery at Bethesda...
...The performers donate their time which is wholly worthless...
...The widespread appreciation of serious problems in our military medical system has caused major reforms to be announced...
...Fortunately, if the diagnosis of the basal cell carcinoma of the skin is correct, that particular cancer should pose no serious future problem...
...They concern the fact that the colon cancer for which he was operated on must have been in his body growing slowly for several years before it was found...
...A committee hearing on this topic produced several examples of shocking military medical malpractice THE AMERICAN SPEcTATOR OCTOBER 1985 on servicemen who could not sue...
...October 1985, 210 pages, LC: 85-9117 Cloth, 4685-4 $17.95 Forthcoming , . . Politics, Economics and Welfare Reform: The Failure of Negative Income Tax in Britain and the United States by Les Lenkowsky i ~ University Press of America 4720 Boston Way Lanham, MD 20706 29...
...the patient has it and goes home...
...About 22 percent or 2,774 of 12,893 military doctors do not have such licenses and will have to get them within the next three years...
...Bishops lodged a protest with the Holy See about the interviews...
...The subsequent fiasco over Mr...
...Plus it's free advertising...
...After twenty years of working on Latin America's development problems, the author is convinced that it is the way Latin Americans see the world that principally 9 explains why Latin America is underdeveloped and unstable, its wealth and land so inequitably distributed...
...I thought of Yuri's story frequently last summer as I followed President Reagan's medical treatment by the most socialized part of American medicine: the military medical system...
...Paul--will tell you egotism is the source of sin...
...i IF YOU'D LIKE TO FIND OUT WHA T'S HAPPENING BOTH IN THE WORLD AND THE CHURCH OFTEN BEFORE IT APPEARS ANYWHERE ELSE...
...He laughed at my reaction and said he was much better than he had been in years...
...Would any of this have made a difference...
...0 altt l) THE WANDERER is the oldest national Catholic weekly in the U'S...
...Then he added he might be dead already if he had stuck to the services of the doctors in 9 fancy clinics and hospitals reserved for the Kremlin elite...
...But the same health insurance policy would have paid for his hospital and doctor bills if had gone to a topnotch hospital in the private sector...
...Billig, who was suspended after investigation of the deaths and other complications which followed his cardiovascular surgery at Bethesda, was apparently approved and promoted at Bethesda because he had good friends in the Navy medical command...
...Indeed, they're gaining public adulation and a thoroughly unmerited good opinion of themselves...
...This is the background against which I ask again why Reagan chose to be treated at Bethesda, if only because this choice was consistent with the dismayingly poor-quality medical care afforded him over the last year and a half...
...Rock 'n' roll's dopey crusade against African hunger has, I posit, added to the stock of human misery...
...Co-published with the Center for International Affairs, Harvard University...
...The civilian doctors will review about 150,000 military hospital admissions a year, or about 15 percent of the total...
...Thus in 1982 both the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals and the Navy inspector General's office found serious deficiencies there, particularly in medical record keeping...
...But if he had had a civilian primary physician whose major responsibility was to Congress and ting...
...The cost of malpractice suits against military hospitals and physicians has risen from $29 million in 1982 to $41 million in 1984...
...This book challenges a conventional wisdom, subscribed to around the world, that blarn~ the rich countries for the poverty of the poor countries...
...After a long time I learned he was very ill...
...Three top Navy medical officers have been reassigned and are awaiting courts martial or other possible disciplinary action against them because of their alleged roles in the Billig affair...
...If Reagan had remembered his own preachings on this topic he might, like my friend Yuri, have found a better doctor outside his elite military medical ambience, or at least a doctor who would have insisted that what needed to be done should be done, and quickly...
...Then the poor audience pledges all the contributions and buys all the trash with money it can ill afford to spend...
...The deficiencies in his right eye were such as to suggest he could not have the full three-dimensional depth perception which is central to good surgery...
...What is much more likely is that the President was using the psychiatric mechanism 9 denial...
...The personal connection, not medical ability or suitability, played the decisive role...
...The circus atmosphere of the Live Aid concerts makes the world's problems seem easy and fun to solve and implies that the solutions are naturally uncontroversial...
...Under the first, all 27military physicians will be required for the first time to obtain state medical licenses...
...Colonoscopy is normally an ambulatory procedure...
...Yuri was convinced he had survived because of the doctor's care...
...He doesn't seem to be very wise in choosing doctors...
...There was, for example, the congressional furor over the legal prohibition against servicemen suing a military hospital or doctor for malpractice...
...Reagan's breast...
...Billig had been removed from the staff of a New Jersey civilian hospital several years ago on the basis of charges which reflected on both his integrity and his competence...
...Military doctors have also undoubtedly read about the ancient custom of killing the bearer of bad news...
...Reagan's generation have had these tests...
...If true, that shows incredible ignorance about some of the most elementary health information senior citizens normally have...
...Bethesda Naval Hospital, where the President went, has had more than its share of publicity about its problems...
...As in Harry Schwartz is writer-in-residence at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University...
...It is hard to understand that unless one assumes that some doctor in the presidential entourage had a realistic idea of what would be found during colonoscopy and what would therefore follow...
...Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven...
...Such accusations were not accurate, but WANDERER readers were not surprised by the Holy Sea's condemnation of the "catechism" and understood the problems long before anybody else...
...July 1985, 292 pages, LC: 85-5303 Paper, 4632-3 $ 9.75 Cloth, 4631-5 $24.50 Underdevelopment is a State of Mind: The Latin American Case 9 By Lawrence E. Harrison Co-published with the Harvard Center for international Affairs, this volume offers a new way of looking at development and underdevelopment, one that explains not only why some countries do better than others-in this Hemisphere and elsewhere--but also why some ethnic groups do better than others...
...For one, you have absolutely number one priority and so does your wife...
...The German edition of THE WANDERER was one of the first to be forbidden by the Third Reich when the Nazis came to power...
...Why in all the years his colon cancer was growing did he not get a barium enema, an X-ray procedure that permits the colon to be visualized, or a colonoscopy until that Friday last July...
...52 issues- $25.00 six months -- $13.00 | - - - - - - - - . . . . - - . . . - - - - - - - - _ _ _ _ . . . . _ _ _ _ _ _ m _ _ _ _ _ _ . . 9 | THE WANDERER PRESS ~ I | 201 Ohio St...
...Reagan entered Bethesda that he would remain there that night regardless of what the findings were...
...As his first physician in the White House he chose an elderly neurosurgeon who worked for the Veterans Administration...
...So Mrs...
...Allen The most comprehensive one-vo]ume access to Antifederalist thought, this volume offers a selected anthology of readings excerpted from the body of Antifederalist writing...
...And the litany of attacks has not stopped in more recent years...
...But by finding his special doctor he had won a remission in his cancer which extended his life and permitted him to visit the United States and Western Europe one more time...
...Probably not by the time his cancer was found and operated on...
...Yet there is one curious point...
...Let alone everyone that saith sha la la la la and doobie doobie do...
...No doubt the President expected something similar when he entered Bethesda...
...Such thorough and hard-hitting reports are published each week in THE WANDERER...
...Yuri was one of Pravda's chief commentators on international politics...
...PRAVDA denounced THE WANDERER by name in 1945...
...Certainly he had no reason to complain about the superb treatment he received at the private George Washington University Hospital where his life was saved after the 1981 assassination attempt against him...
...Reagan's...
...Hence there must be a tendency not to draw too dire conclusions...
...This collection, marking the 25th anniversary of the Harvard Center for International Affairs, represents central issues for research in international affairs during this decade...
...But he had been lucky, he told me, and had found an extraordinary doctor in the major part of the Soviet medical establishment that treats ordinary citizens...
...Instead they levy a sort of regressive alms tax on the befuddled millions...
...Yet it was announced before Mr...
...There have been efforts to defend this inexplicable omission by claiming that the President was being treated according to the guidelines of the American Cancer Society, and that there is only one level of treatment for all Americans...
...AND IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR A JOURNAL THA T ISN'T SHY ABOUT NAMING NAMES AND EXPOSING THOSE WHO WOULD DISTORT CHURCH TEACHING (ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY TRY TO DO IT IN THE NAME OF THE CHURCH) . . . THEN YOU WANT...
...Co-published with the Center for the Study of the Constitution...
...The fee-for-service physician must please his patient because otherwise the patient will go to someone else...
...But the really basic questions go back earlier...
...Neurosurgeons are just the thing if you need your head opened up and part of your brain taken out safely...
...m., . . . . . . , . . . . 9 ., - - - . ~ . . . . . . . . ~ . . . o , , . . ~ . . . . . . , , , , . . . . ,, . . . . . . . , , . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , . . . . , , . . . o . . , , . . . . ,, . , , . ~ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ~ ,, . . . . . . . , . . . , , . = . . , , . . . . . i , . . , , . . . . ~ ~ o . o . . . o ~ o ~ 1 7 6 NO WAY TO TREAT A PRESIDENT by Harry Schwartz From the 1950s through the early 1970s, I was the New York Times" Kremlinologist...
...The chapters of the book cover three central themes: The Origin of Antifederalist Thought, The Antifederalist Views of Federalism, and The Antifederalist Views of Republicanism...
...Polyps were found in May 1984 and March 1985, and on the latter IF YOU THINK THE IMPORTANT THING ABOUT POPE JOHN PAUL II IS NOT THAT HE'S PHOTOGENIC, BUT THAT HE TELLS THE TRUTH...
...En- | II closed is my check for $ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | i I | Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | I A r,s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I I I | City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I " . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , occasion, there was some blood in his stool...
...When we did meet, I was taken aback by how 9 ill he looked and the amount of weight he had obviously lost...
Vol. 18 • October 1985 • No. 10
