Universal Health Care Will Damage Everyone in Mass. (and the Nation)
Poor, Rich, Patients and Doctors Will All Lose
By Attorney J. Edward Pawlick

            We heard a lot in the recent election about how John Kerry and the Democrats will save us all with Universal Health Care.

            First, I will demonstrate in a few short paragraphs that my diabetes doctor, Richard Bernstein, M.D., was severely damaged and almost killed by the medical establishment while in their care before he went to medical school at age 45 and began to fight back. Even though he and his books are now nationally recognized by Frank Vinicor, M.D.* and others, most of the establishment still has most diabetics eating large amounts of carbohydrates which are poisonous to us. This practice would have killed Dr. Bernstein a long time ago if he had continued it.

            Then I will explain that if I personally were forced into a hospital tomorrow because of some trauma like an automobile accident, I would undoubtedly leave feet-first because of the terrible things they would do to me to control my diabetes.

            These are truisms for almost every disease, not just diabetes. There is no one who is smart enough to know the answers to everything in life. This includes the practice of medicine. The establishment has been wrong, often tragically, many times, over the centuries.

            (*Dr. Vinicor is head of the diabetes unit at the federal Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, and past president of the American Diabetes Association.)

 

            When Richard Bernstein was diagnosed with diabetes in 1946 at age 12, all of the doctors (all of them) said he must eat large amounts of high carbohydrate foods  and avoid all fat.

            Back then no one was allowed to know his own blood sugar scores unless he first obtained a doctor’s permission to do so. All medical labs were required by law to deny everyone this information about their own body.

            The breakthrough came in 1969 when Bernstein saw an ad directed at hospitals for a small, new machine which would measure the amount of sugar in a drop of blood. As an engineer, he quickly realized this would allow him to begin testing his own blood for an entire day as many times as necessary in order to lower his blood sugars without the need for a doctor. So he quickly ordered the new $650 machine.

            But the company refused to sell to him, only to hospitals and doctors. It was 11 years later (1980) before they finally were allowed to sell to people to whom it mattered the most, those who were suffering from diabetes. Nevertheless, Bernstein got a machine right away --- because his wife was a medical doctor.

            He soon discovered that while on the diet mandated for all diabetics, his blood sugars (which would be normal at about 85-mg) vacillated twice a day from a terribly low 40-mg to a terribly high 400-mg. However, as a result of his new independence from the medical establishment, he was able within a year of experiments to normalize his blood sugars to the 85-mg range around the clock.

            This allowed him to remove himself from the acute stage where he was in danger of dying, but he will never be able to correct the severe damage to his limbs and other parts of the body imposed upon him by the unanimous recommendations of the medical establishment.

 

My Other Doctor Advises the Exact Opposite

            My other medical doctor, Michael Janson, a vegetarian from Cambridge who has advised me for over twenty years, lives on beans, rice and similar high carbohydrate foods, as does every vegetarian. Even though he told me when I first went to his office that it was up to me to manage my own body and he could only advise me, he obviously is very uncomfortable with my discovery that Dr. Bernstein’s findings have practically  cured me after living with the disease for over fifty years.

            (However, the manifestations in my body are totally different from Bernstein’s and I do not believe we have the same disease. His body never produces any insulin while mine starts out fine and then produces too much insulin.)

            I was always in excellent health and a good athlete until my 16th birthday when I was counselor at a Boy Scout camp in 1943. That summer I had a high fever and they gave me the new wonder drug, sulfa. I have not been the same since. My parents took me to many of the best doctors in New York City because I felt so bad and looked so poor. Many suggested I had had polio but none mentioned diabetes which ran in the family, including my mother. They tested me only with urine tests, even though 10% of diabetics do not pass sugar in their urine. No one tested my blood.

            I passed a rigorous test for Annapolis, but I knew I was no longer in the physical shape necessary for the rigors of the Navel Academy, even though the doctors didn’t. I joined the Navy and went to boot camp at Great Lakes where I suffered immeasurably while trying to be a good sailor.

            In 1952, I was drafted into the Army at age 25 and shipped to Korea as a rifleman, still silently suffering from my affliction. I entered night law school at age 30 at George Washington University, living with a group of guys in Georgetown where I bought my own food and felt very good on that diet.

            I transferred to Yale Law School after a year and started on dormitory food. You can imagine what that did to my diabetes. I went downhill very fast (still staying in the top of the class). For example, I would try to go swimming at the gym a block away, but would go only one length and then walk back to the dorm, hoping I would make it without collapsing.

            Although the students at Yale were nice as individuals, the atmosphere was that of coercive liberalism and my money was running out, so I returned to G.W. after one semester. As soon as I returned to Washington, I went to see a doctor and told him we had to discover what my problem was. He finally discovered that what had troubled me for 15 years was diabetes.

            I was immediately admitted to Georgetown Hospital for two days to see what complications I had suffered over the years and was then put on the popular drug, Orinase. But it gave me such bad stomachaches that I thought I had an ulcer and they removed me from it after about a year. About ten years ago they discovered it was very damaging. I have been told by doctors that if I had not asked to be taken off it, I would be dead now.

            Meanwhile, I read the seminal book, “Body, Mind and Sugar,” by a medical doctor with a PhD in chemistry, who explained about low blood sugar and why I should be eating high protein and low carbohydrates. Although that excellent book began the “low blood sugar” craze that engulfed many, it was too scholarly to be read by most and other superficial books became popular.

            And so I went on with my life as a successful lawyer, but still not in perfect physical condition.

 

Which Doctor Would Be Assigned to Me?

            Which doctor would the government assign to me under Universal Health Care? It would be a matter of life-and-death to me with their totally inconsistent views.

            Would it be Dr. Janson with mostly high carbohydrates or Dr. Bernstein with extremely low carbohydrates and a lot of protein and good fats?

             Obviously, I would not be able to choose if we have Universal Health Care. I would be told what to do. Under Hillary Clinton’s plan which was rejected in 1992, I would be forbidden by law from seeing any doctor other than the one assigned.

            It gets worse. I went to see a doctor at the excellent Marino Health Center in Cambridge/Wellesley to ask which regimen he thought I should follow. He arrogantly told me I should follow only his advice. When I indicated that I could not promise to do that until I knew what the advice was, he became very belligerent and we parted with my being $125 poorer from the experience.

            Which of the three doctors would I be assigned?

 

There Is a Way to Help

            If we decide to help those few who clog up our hospitals and demand care to cure their latest addiction to drugs, alcohol, or whatever, we must not overload our doctors, nurses and others so that we destroy our health system, which is still the best in the world despite its human faults.

            Since there are very few people who do not have adequate health care, we should help only them and not begin a coercive system which helps only the politicians, who will get more and more power (which is really what they want).

            The number who do not have adequate care in the U.S. is acknowledged by all to be somewhere around 10%-15%.