DR. EZEKIEL EMMANUEL, "HEALTH CARE CZAR".
The proposed healthcare bills now in development in both houses of congress will all ultimately put the decisions about your care and your longevity in the hands of presidential appointees, Czars who were never elected nor confirmed. They are deciding what plans will cover, how much independence your doctor can have and what treatments and care senior citizens and the very young deserve. Medicare will eventually become a thing of the past.
At least two of President Obama's top health advisers should never be trusted with that much power. One of them is Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of President Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. Dr Emauel has already been appointed to two very important positions: health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research. Emanuel has already warned the American public that the reductions in care for the very young and elderly will not be free of pain. Read Dr. Emanuel’s words below:
"Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely 'lipstick' cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change," (Health Affairs Feb. 27, 2008).
He has stated that savings would require that doctors change how they think about their patients: He believes that doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, "as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others" (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008).
Yes, that may be what you want your doctor to do, but Dr. Emanuel wants doctors to look at the bigger picture and not just at the needs of their patients and consider social justice, such as whether the money could be better spent on somebody else. I would imagine that that most doctors are shocked and worried by the belief that a doctor's job is to achieve social justice one patient at a time.
Emanuel, however, believes that "communitarianism" (another word for Socialist) should dictate decisions on who gets care. He insists that medical care should be limited for the non-disabled, not given to those "who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens . . . as he felt similarly about not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia" (Hastings Center Report, Nov.-Dec. '96). That means that care to a grandmother with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson's or to a child with capacity issue like cerebral palsy should be seriously limited at best.
He unambiguously supports, defends, and encourages discrimination against older patients: "Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years" (Lancet, Jan. 31).
Dr. Emanuel has revealed his malicious and dictatorial ideas of his plan over several years and he published it in the January, 2009 issue (Volume 373, Issue 9661) of The Lancet. Here are some excerpts from the article follow:
"Some people wrongly suggest that allocation can be based purely on scientific or clinical facts, often using the term “medical need”. There are no value-free medical criteria for allocation.
Consideration of the importance of complete lives also supports modifying the youngest-first principle by prioritizing adolescents and young adults over infants. Adolescents have received substantial education and parental care, investments that will be wasted without a complete life. Infants, by contrast, have not yet received these investments. Similarly, adolescence brings with it a developed personality capable of forming and valuing long-term plans whose fulfillment requires a complete life.
When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated.
Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years. Treating 65-year-olds differently because of stereotypes or falsehoods would be ageist; treating them differently because they have already had more life-years is not."
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