Poor misunderstood Ezekiel J. Emanuel.
Ezekiel, if you don’t know, is the older brother of the statist Rahm Emanuel, and recently Ezekiel got his feelings hurt.
In an interview he just gave the Associated Press, Monday (August 24th), Ezekiel said this:
“I’m completely dumbfounded. I’ve been in academic disputes before, but I never thought I’d be disparaged on Sunday morning talk shows and in the papers, being distorted in ways that can only be described as willful and intentional.”
What Ezekiel Emanuel is referring to here is what that same AP article describes as The sometimes ugly health care debate [which] has dragged Ezekiel Emanuel very reluctantly into the spotlight, as opponents of Obama’s proposed reform have seized on snippets of his past writings to bolster their charge that he and the administration advocate a system where bureaucrats — on what former Gov. Sarah Palin has famously called “death panels” — would play God, ruling on whether ailing Grandma deserves medical care. The accusations have been widely debunked as distortions of Emanuel’s and the administration’s views. Still, they persist, leaving Emanuel both stunned and hurt.
You see, it’s tough being a eugenicist. If you doubt that, just watch Ezekiel squirm like the worm that he is under this historian’s searing testimony:
Here, while we’re on the subject, is what Barack Obama told the New York Times regarding his desire to control your health:
The chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here. [Therefore] I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance.
Keep in mind that this unspeakable injustice would all be avoided if your inalienable right to your own life — and only your own life — were recognized as it should be.
In response to that despicable ideology, no less than Nat Hentoff — a civil libertarian about as far to the left as the socialist Noam Chomsky — wrote the following:
I was not intimidated during J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI hunt for reporters like me who criticized him. I railed against the Bush-Cheney war on the Bill of Rights without blinking. But now I am finally scared of a White House administration. President Obama’s desired health care reform intends that a federal board (similar to the British model) — as in the Center for Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation in a current Democratic bill — decides whether your quality of life, regardless of your political party, merits government-controlled funds to keep you alive. Watch for that life-decider in the final bill. It’s already in the stimulus bill signed into law.
The members of that ultimate federal board will themselves not have examined or seen the patient in question. For another example of the growing, tumultuous resistance to “Dr. Obama,” particularly among seniors, there is a July 29 Washington Times editorial citing a line from a report written by a key adviser to Obama on cost-efficient health care, prominent bioethicist Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel (brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel).
Emanuel writes about rationing health care for older Americans that “allocation (of medical care) by age is not invidious discrimination.” (The Lancet, January 2009) He calls this form of rationing — which is fundamental to Obamacare goals — “the complete lives system.” You see, at 65 or older, you’ve had more life years than a 25-year-old. As such, the latter can be more deserving of cost-efficient health care than older folks.
No matter what Congress does when it returns from its recess, rationing is a basic part of Obama’s eventual master health care plan. Here is what Obama said in an April 28 New York Times interview (quoted in Washington Times July 9 editorial) in which he describes a government end-of-life services guide for the citizenry as we get to a certain age, or are in a certain grave condition. Our government will undertake, he says, a “very difficult democratic conversation” about how “the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care” costs.
Nat Hentoff continues:
As the Washington Post’s Charles Lane penetratingly explains (Undue influence,” Aug. 8): the government would pay doctors to discuss with Medicare patients explanations of “living wills and durable powers of attorney … and (provide) a list of national and state-specific resources to assist consumers and their families” on making advance-care planning (read end-of-life) decisions.
Significantly, Lane adds that, “The doctor ’shall’ (that’s an order) explain that Medicare pays for hospice care (hint, hint).”
But the Obama administration claims these fateful consultations are “purely voluntary.” In response, Lane — who learned a lot about reading between the lines while the Washington Post’s Supreme Court reporter — advises us:
“To me, ‘purely voluntary’ means ‘not unless the patient requests one.’”
But Obamas’ doctors will initiate these chats. “Patients,” notes Lane, “may refuse without penalty, but many will bow to white-coated authority.”
And who will these doctors be? What criteria will such Obama advisers as Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel set for conductors of end-of-life services?
I was alerted to Lanes’ crucial cautionary advice — for those of use who may be influenced to attend the Obamacare twilight consultations — by Wesley J. Smith, a continually invaluable reporter and analyst of, as he calls his most recent book, the “Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America” (Encounter Books).
As more Americans became increasingly troubled by this and other fearful elements of Dr. Obama’s cost-efficient health care regimen, Smith adds this vital advice, no matter what legislation Obama finally signs into law:
“Remember that legislation itself is only half the problem with Obamacare. Whatever bill passes, hundreds of bureaucrats in the federal agencies will have years to promulgate scores of regulations to govern the details of the law.
“This is where the real mischief could be done because most regulatory actions are effectuated beneath the public radar. It is thus essential, as just one example, that any end-of-life counseling provision in the final bill be specified to be purely voluntary … and that the counseling be required by law to be neutral as to outcome. Otherwise, even if the legislation doesn’t push in a specific direction — for instance, THE GOVERNMENT REFUSING TREATMENT — the regulations could.” (Emphasis added.)
Who’ll let us know what’s really being decided about our lives — and what is set into law? To begin with, Charles Lane, Wesley Smith and others whom I’ll cite and add to as this chilling climax of the Obama presidency comes closer (Nat Hentoff, an article for Jewish World Review (August 19, 2009) entitled “I am finally scared of a White House administration.”).
In the previously mentioned AP interview, Ezekiel Emanuel added the following:
“I worked pretty hard and against the odds to improve end-of-life care. And so to have that record and that work completely perverted — it’s pretty shocking, and it’s also very, very hurtful…. I happen to be my brother’s brother. So I’m a convenient target.”
Yes, it must be that, sir, and not the loathsome content of your so-called ideas.
As a matter of fact, a Washington Times editorial entitled “Health rationing by other names: Obama health adviser doesn’t ‘evolve’ enough,” blasted to smithereens Ezekiel Emanuel’s pathetic excuses:
When Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a key presidential health care adviser, told The Washington Times on Thursday that his “thinking has evolved” on the subject of health care rationing, he was making a distinction without a difference. Even his “evolved” ideas amount to nothing more than government rationing by another name.
Here’s what Dr. Emanuel told news reporter Jon Ward: “When I began working in the health policy area about 20 years ago … I thought we would definitely have to ration care, that there was a need to make a decision and deny people care.” And: “I think that over the last five to seven years … I’ve come to the conclusion that in our system we are spending way more money than we need to, a lot of it on unnecessary care. If we got rid of that care we would have absolutely no reason to even consider rationing except in a few cases.”
First of all, notice that he gives himself an out “in a few cases.” That is the health-care-rationing equivalent of being just a little bit pregnant. You either ration or you don’t.
Second, when it is the government, rather than private individuals through the open market, deciding what is or isn’t “unnecessary care,” and deciding what care to get “rid of,” then that by definition is government rationing. Government acts by compulsion. If government decides what is “necessary,” and grandma’s hip-replacement surgery is deemed “unnecessary” even if grandma wants the surgery, then grandma’s care has been rationed by the power of the state — no matter what words you use to describe it.
The reason people were wary of Dr. Emanuel in the first place is because of his writings from the 1990s in which (to quote one of them), he advocated giving younger people first dibs on medical care: “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.” In late 1996, he wrote that “services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed.”
As noted Friday by Ralph Reiland in the American Spectator online, Dr. Emanuel had not seemed to change much even as late as 2008: “Last year in ‘Health Affairs: The Policy Journal of the Health Sphere,’ Emanuel wrote that ‘Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely lipstick cost controls, more for show and public relations than for true change.’ ”
Ironically, those “vague promises of savings” are exactly the ones President Obama has been making in his fruitless attempts to claim that his plans won’t be exorbitantly expensive. Dr. Emanuel was right then: The only way to implement Mr. Obama’s proposals without breaking the bank is to impose the sort of rationing that Dr. Emanuel formerly pushed. That is morally unacceptable (source).
No, being a eugenicist can’t be all gravy. Just ask Ezekiel Emanuel: not only must one take on the responsibility of deciding who lives and who dies; one must also keep straight the endless lies, rationalizations, and equivocations.
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This entry was posted by rayharvey on Thursday; August 27th, 2009 at 3:23 am and is filed under News, Obama Campaign.
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Word count: 1821.
Tags: Charles Lane, Death Panels, Ezekiel J. Emanuel, H.R. 3200, Nat Hentoff, Obamacare, Rahm Emanuel, single-payer healthcare, Universal Healthcare, Washington Post, Washington Times, Wesley J. Smith.
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Ray: Many of Obama’s special advisers (czars) seem to have political philosophies that are much more in tune with Hitler’s regime than with everyday Americans. And … ole “Zeke” and “Rahmbo” are cream of the crop.
It’s nice to know that “Zeke” is so comfortable making decisions about “who lives and who dies”.
Yes, it’s awful comforting, isn’t it.
Great article. Might want to change “…feeling…” to “…feelings…” in the opening paragraph.
[...] really wants government controlled health care?? Common sense. [...]
Thank you, James. Got her all taken care of. Keep me in line, would you.
I liked! So clear and positive.