Oh, for the love of death!
Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of White House Chief of Staff nepotism Rahm Emanuel, who was already appointed health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research, recently outed himself with the following necrophilic first-dance-with-Mary-Jane gems.
On record since last year for having already bluntly admitted that the cuts associated with the new heath care reform bill will not be "pain-free," he declared that "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). Savings, he wrote, will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, he believes (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008). Emanuel wants doctors to look beyond the needs of their patients and consider "social justice," and let "communitarianism" guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those "who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens . . . An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia" (Hastings Center Report, Nov.-Dec. '96). Translation: Don't give much care to a grandmother with Parkinson's or a child with cerebral palsy. He explicitly defends 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).
Acknowledgement: Betsy McCaughey, "Deadly Doctors" (New York Post, July 24, 2009).
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