President Barack Obama is embroiled in the first real test of his mettle, the war that is building both on Capitol Hill and off over health care reform plans. Obama launches a new website 'Reality Check" to encourage his supporters to take his message viral, one of his own administration still stands as a major source of the controversy.
Dr Ezekiel Emmanuel, brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel currently holds two different positions within the Obama team: health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research. This effectively makes him one of the top advisors on the subject and someone who could exert major influence on future health care policy.
His remarks over the last weeks and months though may have given rise to much of the opposition to the President's proposed reforms. As long ago as February of 2008, long before Obama's election he was making some rather strong statements. He wrote in Health Affairs "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,"
As the piece continued he opined that for real savings to occur doctors needed to change the way they thought and felt about the patients they treated. They take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously he complained as" an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others"
Inflammatory opinions like that make some of the fears of the general public seem a little more understandable. Patients want, and indeed expect their physicians to put their health and well being above economic concerns and many doctors feel the same way.
From his writings it appears though that Emanuel does not feel that way. He prefers the notion of communitarianism, he believes that health care should be given to the non disabled, not to those "who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens . . . An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia".
From this some see denial of care for a relative with dementia, or as Sarah Palin alluded to, the care of a child with Down's syndrome.
These and other controversial opinions that Emanuel holds have provided ammunition for the opponents of health care reform. A brief Internet search brings up many more articles in which Emmanuel seems to show little compassion for entire sections of the population. Though these may not be the opinions of Obama himself having such a man at the very top of his list of advisors may be doing him very few favors.
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Obama's healthplan if rewritten so that those people that wish to keep their own health insurance and to exclude illegal aliens as a first step might be worth considering. He should leave the insurance companies alone and consider how many people will be put out of work if he signs a bill which eliminates all insurance except government for people who really don't deserve it. Those of us who are stable with our insurance resent his interference in our lives.
ReplyDeleteThank you for having the integrity and the cahones to put the truth in print. There is a reason, in fact many reasons to question President Obama's Healthcare reform. You have mentioned some of those in your above written article and there are many more if one reads the bill as written in the 1,000 pages that we must read carefully, very carefully.
ReplyDeleteOnce again, it's stupid for citizens to listen to what President Obama says. All politicians lie through their teeth...You'll get a much more accurate take on what his true beliefs are by looking at those within his inner circle. You can bet that the President shares Dr. Emanuels elitist views on Health Care..He is smart enough to never state it though..
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