Posted on 08/01/2009 9:17:00 AM PDT by wagglebee
I have been doing a little reading about Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the head bioethicist at the NIH and brother of the president’s chief of staff. He is a supporter of health care rationing, which is relevant to the current health care debate. In a Lancet article earlier this year, he suggested that age be a proper method of allocating scarce resources, and indeed, stated that age based allocation is not invidious discrimination. From his piece:
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. 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.
He seems to be saying, be ageist, just call it something different.
Still, as I read the article closely, it was not about health care rationing in the general sense, but rather, concerned situations of extreme resource scarcity. Thus, while I think it is fair to say that Emmanuel is clearly laying the intellectual groundwork for an age-based rationing regimen, he doesn’t take the final step, writing:
Accepting the complete lives system for health care as a whole would be premature. We must first reduce waste and increase spending.
Some might say that is just a hedge to avoid the heat. And indeed, bioethicists often promote radical ideas they advocate generally by using extreme situation hypotheticals to make their intellectual points, thereby allowing them a path of retreat if the blowback becomes withering. Still, unlike some others who have commented about this piece in the current health care reform debate, I don’t think he explicitly advocated a system of health care rationing now based on age, at least not in this particular article.
The same can’t be said of an article he wrote in the Hastings Center Report, in which he explicitly advocates rationing based on what appears to be a quality of life measurement. From the piece:
This civic republican or deliberative democratic conception of the good provides both procedural and substantive insights for developing a just allocation of health care resources. Procedurally, it suggests the need for public forums to deliberate about which health services should be considered basic and should be socially guaranteed. Substantively, it suggests services that promote the continuation of the polity-those that ensure healthy future generations, ensure development of practical reasoning skills, and ensure full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations-are to be socially guaranteed as basic. Conversely, services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.
A lot of people are frightened that someone who thinks like Emanuel is at the center of an administration seeking to remake the entire health care system. Having read these two articles, I think there is very real cause for concern.
I suppose life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are likewise not basic in the mind of this heartless RAT, but also subject to age rationing?
This time World Socialism will support our National Socialism.
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
“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. 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.”
In Rush’s words, GOBBLEDY GOOK!
New age, feelgood babble but in reality he says nothing except kill the oldies!
The One is on record saying babies born alive from botched abortions should not be given medical treatment. And now that seniors should not be given medical treatment and moved into hospices after mandatory "End of Life" counseling.
"C'mon, buddy, we can't afford this. Time for you to go..."
Vaccine May Be More Dangerous Than Swine Flu
Fast-tracked Swine Flu Vaccine under Fire:Toxic adjuvants in flu vaccines
I don’t know if the Emmanuels’ parents are still alive but if they are what must they think of their children? Were they raised this way? This guy Ezekiel is waaay out in left field.
When the government can decide who has a right to life then you have NO rights that the government can't take away. Only loyal party members are participating citizens.
Method: “developing a just allocation of ...resources.”
Tactic: “public forums.”
Goals:
“1) the continuation of the polity-those that ensure healthy future generations
2) ensure development of practical reasoning skills
3) full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations”
Objective: “socially guaranteed.”
Exactly.
“Only loyal party members” exist.
All others do or will not.
Membership is limited.
I keep getting this comment from a sister.
Also, the president has repeated numerously that if you already have health insurance that you are happy with you do not have to take this. I like the option that if I lose a job or quit I can take this health insurance rather than a costly COBRA.
Please provide me with several of the best answers to this. Links, both factual and well worded opinions, supporting each answer would also be good.
Help me as this sister is surrounded by liberals. I don't want her turning against me. I have difficulty keeping my own arguments clear in any verbal instruction without good instructions because (as anyone who knows me) I so easily can be sent off chasing tangents.
Thanks.
Av
So, Emanuel wants to be the “decider”. Piss on him. He needs to be stood against the wall.
If your sister gets insurance from her employer- she doesn’t get to decide to keep it if the employer switches to the government option. Are employers going to keep paying $800/month/employee, when the government option is “free” ?
“Notice that the standard is written fuzzily so that old people who are still “valuable” will still get health care. I assume this means govt officials and tenured professors and the like.”
Bingo!
Evidently not enough reading has been done. I’ve read the articles (both referred to here) and this is total BS. I urge people to read the good doctor’s articles themselves.
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is a great an compassionate man. His Lancet article (which is a great read BTW) is about how one should allocate care in terrible situations when you cannot save everyone. The quote about dementia in the other article, crucially misses the whole point by ignoring the next few lines in the actual article. When he’s talking about “basic” care he’s referring to specific list of things which should be guaranteed to a normal patient capable of benefiting from them, such as say an Autistic child being guarantied educational therapy which would not benefit an someone suffering from dementia. In the later case another system would need to be in place to address effectively the needs of such an individual.
He is a modern-day Dr. Mengele and it now appears that YOU are a troll.
This is the United States of America, we are not some putrid third-world cesspool despite Zero's attempts to turn us into one, we DO HAVE the resources to treat everyone and we ALWAYS HAVE.
The moment we accept a plan that allows for rationing, the more things will be rationed. That is how fascism works and you are either too naive to see it or you are an active advocate of it.
BUMP
Perhaps so.
I've got just such a "terrible" situation for you: the govt takes over health care and starts cutting costs. From the house bill:
The Secretary shall establish within the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality a Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research ...to conduct, support, and synthesize research... with respect to the outcomes, effectiveness, and appropriateness of health care services and procedures in order to identify the manner in which diseases, disorders, and other health conditions can most effectively and appropriately be prevented, diagnosed, treated, and managed clinically.
Among the specialties on this center are
III) Bioethics.
IV) Decision sciences.
V) Health disparities.
VI) Economics.
What part of this unconstitutional power grab do you not understand? A federal committee of Decision Scientists and Economists are going to decide who gets care (20-somethiing) and who gets left outside to die (infants, aged, etc)
Are you sure that's what you meant to say? "The Good Doctor" is one of Mengele's nicknames. How would reading his articles convince us of Emanuel's compassion?
They’re just re-cycling Hitler and “Duty to Die” Dick Lamm!
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