Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is a special advisor to the President on health care. As the brother of the President’s Chief of Staff, it is safe to assume that he has better access to the the President than many of his other advisors.
So, how content should we be as the ObamaCare healthcare reform is forged ahead, when Dr. Emanuel does not believe that the Hippocratic oath is important. He believes that care should not be based on individualism, but on communitarianism. The costs of healkthacre should be spent on those that will be productive within the community, primarily those between the ages of 15 and 40. Those with disabilities should not be given the same level of treatment, nor should the elderly.
The following passage details just some of Dr. Emanuel’s thoughts on helath care, rationing health care, and why the government should be the ones in control of every facet of healthcare:
If health care is to be rationed, what’s the right way to do it? Zeke Emanuel (who is also the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel) wrote an entire article on this subject in the Lancet on January 31, 2009. Emanuel advocated allocating health resources in order to maximize collective life years. Suppose a 25-year-old and a 65-year-old have a life threatening disease. Since the 25-year-old has many more potential years of life ahead of him, he should receive preferential treatment, says Emanuel. He justifies denying care to elderly patients in the following way:
The complete lives system discriminates against older people…. 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.
There’s more. In a different article written more than 10 years ago for the Hastings Center Report, Emanuel said health services should not be guaranteed to “individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens.” He continues, “An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.”
Full article on Dr. Emanuel: http://www.john-goodman-blog.com/rationing-health-care-2/
Just Americans Making Ethical Statements Weblog 
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August 11, 2009 at 11:30 am
Government health care – the “death panel” at work « Lightduty’s Blog
[…] special advisor on health care, Ezekiel Emanuel, puts it this way: Suppose a 25-year-old and a 65-year-old have a life threatening disease. Since the […]
August 17, 2009 at 8:29 am
nyp
What an unfair, misleading post. Dr. Emmanuel’s Lancet article was limited to the special case where transplant organs or lifesaving vaccines are in short supply and there are more eligible recipients than there are organs or vaccines. Why did you deliberately choose not to mention that? You also neglect to note that severe, unfair, arbitrary rationing occurs every single day in the American health care system because millions of American families do not have health insurance. Lose your job, and you lose your access to medical care. How can you possibly defend the justice of such a system? How could it possibly be more just than the current reform proposals?
August 17, 2009 at 4:02 pm
JAMES
nyp- I don’t know where you live, but the hospitals near me turn no one away, regardless of the ability to pay.
Lifesaving vaccines and organs– i guess Obama, Pelosi and Reid would be first in line, and zBush and Cheney last… We’ll have rationing based on political donations and party affiliation. The current reforms are far from just– they require me to pay for medical coverage for my employees of pay an 8% payroll penalty. Why am I required to pay their insurance– no one gives me mine. Why should my business be taxed to pay for others? Why is what I earn deemed the property of others. My earnings are a part of my pursuit of happiness, and a part of my liberty– hands off!!
April 22, 2010 at 10:07 am
marc
Triage is a sad and regrettable thing. Promoting systems by which triage can be implemented is worrisome. I have a problem with the ethic that focuses a on scarcity rather than trying to sole the problem of scarcity.
Scarce is a relative term. Today it may be scarce organs for transplants. Tomorrow it may be hospital beds.
Coming up with metrics that value lives is repugnant to me. Do you see yourself asking some to volunteer to forgo the last year of their life so that a young person could get a life saving procedure? this is just a situation we do not want to be in. It is not enough to just say, ‘In everything we must ration.”
The health care system is a for profit industry. As such cost saving increases profits and it is precisely expensive long term diseases that cost a lot.
September 3, 2009 at 3:26 pm
hippieprof
For the record, I am not in favor of rationing health care for anyone – nor do I care for the current rationing practiced by the private insurance industry under a different name.
This being said – is Emanuel really saying anything that we do not already essentially acknowledge as a society?
If a 25-year-old dies suddenly, it is often called a tragedy.
If a 65-year-old dies under exactly the same circumstances, is it called a tragedy? Probably not.
Society already places an implicitly greater value on the lives of the young. Emanuel is simply restating a value society has already embraced, over and over again.
— hippieprof
April 22, 2010 at 10:16 am
marc
When a 65 year old dies it is a tragedy.