If you lump all the mad scientists that have been put on the big screen by Hollywood, you are still not going to come up with the mad, totally insane ideas of Ezekiel Emanuel.
To support my contention, I bring to your attention an Op-Ed written in today's WSJ by Betsy McCaughey. She is chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths and a former lieutenant governor of New York state.
Is Ezekiel against doctors doing their damnedest to help the patient in front of him? You bet he is. Here's McCaughey:
Dr. Emanuel is part of a school of thought that redefines a physician’s duty, insisting that it includes working for the greater good of society instead of focusing only on a patient’s needs. Many physicians find that view dangerous, and most Americans are likely to agree.Does Ezekiel want to be the decider of what your healthcare will consist of, instead of you? You bet he does. McCaughey, again:
The health bills being pushed through Congress put important decisions in the hands of presidential appointees like Dr. Emanuel. They will decide what insurance plans cover, how much leeway your doctor will have, and what seniors get under Medicare.Is Ezekiel tight with Obama? Oh yeah. McCaughey:
Dr. Emanuel, brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, has already been appointed to two key positions: health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of the Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research. He clearly will play a role guiding the White House's health initiative.Is all this stuff about "savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality of care" just a scam propagated by Obama to get Ezekiel in as the decider? You bet is is. Ezekiel has pretty much said so himself. McCaughey:
Dr. Emanuel says that health reform will not be pain free, and that the usual recommendations for cutting medical spending (often urged by the president) are mere window dressing. As he wrote in the Feb. 27, 2008, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA): "Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality of care are merely 'lipstick' cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change."Does Ezekiel believe that doctors thinking only about their patients is a problem? Oh yeah. McCaughey:
True reform, he argues, must include redefining doctors' ethical obligations. In the June 18, 2008, issue of JAMA, Dr. Emanuel blames the Hippocratic Oath for the "overuse" of medical care...
In numerous writings, Dr. Emanuel chastises physicians for thinking only about their own patient's needs. He describes it as an intractable problem: "Patients were to receive whatever services they needed, regardless of its cost. Reasoning based on cost has been strenuously resisted; it violated the Hippocratic Oath, was associated with rationing, and derided as putting a price on life. . . . Indeed, many physicians were willing to lie to get patients what they needed from insurance companies that were trying to hold down costs." (JAMA, May 16, 2007).Does Ezekiel propose designing mad equations to decide who lives and who dies? You bet he does. McCaughey:
In the Lancet, Jan. 31, 2009, Dr. Emanuel and co-authors presented a "complete lives system" for the allocation of very scarce resources, such as kidneys, vaccines, dialysis machines, intensive care beds, and others. "One maximizing strategy involves saving the most individual lives, and it has motivated policies on allocation of influenza vaccines and responses to bioterrorism. . . . Other things being equal, we should always save five lives rather than one.Does Ezekiel want to cut down on the use of new treatments? Oh yeah. McCaughey:
"However, other things are rarely equal—whether to save one 20-year-old, who might live another 60 years, if saved, or three 70-year-olds, who could only live for another 10 years each—is unclear." In fact, Dr. Emanuel makes a clear choice: "When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get changes that are attenuated.
Dr. Emanuel concedes that his plan appears to discriminate against older people, but he explains: "Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination. . . . 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."
The youngest are also put at the back of the line: "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. . . . As the legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin argues, 'It is terrible when an infant dies, but worse, most people think, when a three-year-old dies and worse still when an adolescent does,' this argument is supported by empirical surveys." (thelancet.com, Jan. 31, 2009
To reduce health-insurance costs, Dr. Emanuel argues that insurance companies should pay for new treatments only when the evidence demonstrates that the drug will work for most patients. He says the "major contributor" to rapid increases in health spending is "the constant introduction of new medical technologies, including new drugs, devices, and procedures. . . . With very few exceptions, both public and private insurers in the United States cover and pay for any beneficial new technology without considering its cost. . . ."Ezekiel is one sick mother fucker, who wants to mess with all of us. And the president is conning the American people to get his madness as the law of the land.
Bottom line, Ezekiel looks at the world as though there is just one lump sum of money to be divvied up for healthcare, instead of the potential for individuals to make individual choices based on individual circumstances as to how much healthcare to buy. No one decides how to divide up a lump some amount for the purchase of designer jeans, ice cream or high definition televisions. Markets for things in demand tend to expand over time. Ezekiel wants to destroy this expansion in the world of healthcare.
The rich are most often the ones that spend the most for new technologies. Once a new technology enters the market via spending by the rich, others work on improving it, prices drop dramatically, quality improves dramatically and the masses enjoy the benefits of a product that was once only designed for the very rich. I offer as proof the dramatic decline in prices and the dramatic improvement in quality of calculators, cell phones, televisions and personal computers.
I want every rich fart, with six days to live, to spend every last penny he has on on new medical technologies to keep him breathing even for an extra day. The money he spends for a few extra breaths, will eventually mean new sleek cheap products that will improve the health for the rest of us. That's what America is about, unless, of course, Ezekiel becomes America's Evil Decider. Then it's over, we will then be headed into the Dark Death Age of healthcare.
-RW
Does this boil down to you don't like hope and change. I thought it was just what was needed. You mean it isn't working out. Gosh Darn
ReplyDeleteIf Kervorkian were the Wright Brothers, Emanuel would be NASA
ReplyDeleteThe bitter irony is our first black president is leading the charge to create a 21st century “Plantation Nation” outta our once great republic! With the economic disasters of “Crap and Trade” and government “Health Care” on the horizon, fighting “global warming” and rationed health care will soon place most of our freedom “on ice”! Of course our leaders(rulers) are exempt from all this.
ReplyDeleteThink of all this as if we were a southern ante bellum plantation... when a slave is sick or injured, the owner (the “select” in D.C.?) would decide if the slave was “worth” saving... if the economic value of the slave was nill... call Dr. Ezekiel “Mengele” Emmanuel!
While some people recoil at the occasional use of vulgarities, your unbridled description of Dr. Ezekiel truly captures the vulgarity of his ideas like no other phrase could. Sick mother fucker, indeed.
ReplyDeleteI have had an ongoing argument with my leftist aunt and cousin about this health debacle. My grandmother and my other cousin's Downs baby will die under this bill. Period. And I would like to point out that my grandmother is my aunt's mother, and my cousin's Downs baby is her granddaughter and my other cousin's niece. They know those faces, too.
ReplyDeleteQuite honestly, much as I love my aunt and cousin, I think they look at those deaths as collateral damage and they simply don't care. It absolves my aunt of any resonpsibility for caring for my grandmother and it absolves my healthy cousin of having to buy his own medical insurance, and that's good enough.
There is something missing in the souls of the people that support this bill. After the email deluge with my family, I can't even convince myself that they're deceived and don't really know what they're saying. It's frightening, really.
I generally favour polite language on public forums. With that being said, I think that "sick motherfucker" is way too pleasent a term for this Dr. Mengele.
ReplyDeleteHe has risen up in power amoung his peers. Which tells us something about our medical "profession."
ReplyDeleteYoung, re-educated doctors are non-ethically primed to carry out any fascist death plan demanded by the power elite kooks. By the way, these are the same kooks who refer to human beings as a cancer on their warming planet. And you know how physicians treat cancer.
So Obama's hatchet man has a ghoul for a brother. What does that say about the man holding their leashes?
ReplyDeleteI think this whole collectivized medicine argument of theirs can be used against them. Just take it to the next level. Why are we spending money on aid to the people of Africa? Obviously the amount they contribute to the world economy is miniscule and we shouldn't waste resources on them. Statistically, you could probably say the same thing about the descendants of Africans in America. You could probably say it about many ethnic groups. Why are we wasting money like this? We have the greater good to think about.
First, I didn’t believe it. However, after researching the issue it became clear that Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, health adviser to President Barack Obama, proposes policies that were instituted in Germany during the Third Reich. Emanuel does deserve the title 'Dr. of Death' indeed.
ReplyDeleteEzekiel Emanuel's 'complete lives system' “prioritises younger people [28 years old] who have not yet lived a complete life and will be unlikely to do so without aid” while reducing the probability to receive services to the 20% for the less than 5 and the more than 58 years old age groups.
In short, it is undisputable, the unborn, the very young and the retired folks have plenty reasons to run scared of this type of health care legislation. It also explains how those Medicaid-Medicare-savings (Obama has been talking about) will be realized: Cut services to our children and the retirees.
While I am against most facits of the universal health care initiative, I know that "the number one cause of death in America is properly prescribed drugs"; this quote is from a study published by Gary Null, PhD; also, there is no proof that vaccines decrease the incidence of diseases (the invention of refrigeration and the construction of both municipal water and sewage treatment plants did that. Further, "A study shows a direct link between standard childhood vaccination series and autism-like symptoms in primates. Presented by one of the principal scientists behind it, Dr. Laura Hewitson, PhD, University of Pittsburgh". The notion that Americans can eat whatever processed, crap food offered by industry (with pesticide residue etc.) and then expect to have the healthy eating population pay for their disease treatments (through either private or public insurance), where the drugs only mask the symptoms - not cure the problem - will bankrupt our nation; unless some limits are placed upon such idiotic notions.
ReplyDeleteI hope he hires some really good bodyguards. He's probably going to need them.
ReplyDeleteYou guys are incredibly ignorant to what this man is talking about and it is ironic that you would call your self a economic policy forum. "BURGER KING" health care you have it your way is broke.
ReplyDeleteYour analysis of rich people care trickling down is ridiculous. How many people do you know are self pay for expensive care.
His is the ONLY proposal that has serious cost controls and if you would quit listening to right wing talk radio and get your head out of your rear end you might actually read his proposals.
But you are stuck in the same 'box' as EM is. Health care funds only need to be rationed and controlled if the government is running it. If you take the government out of health care, you've removed the glass ceiling from above our seniors and babies.
ReplyDeleteHis is the ONLY proposal that has serious cost controls because only government run health care needs them. Health care should not be run by the government. By removing all the government layers of bureaucracy from the system, the prices would drop into the ranges of reasonable and if we make the hospitals compete for patients through creature comforts and prices, then we will see prices drop still further to the point where we won't have to wear our dead sisters dentures because instead of depending on the government to pay for them, they're cheap enough that I can get my own.
"Burger King" healthcare is crashing because the government is trying to be a backseat driver. Shut up, and let the hospitals drive themselves.