It’s Big Brother

Rahm Emanuel’s big brother, that is. Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist who has long been involved with healthcare issues, is now “a top adviser to White House budget chief Peter Orszag.” Does anybody know where he stands on anything? Might be a good idea to find out since Obama’s carving out hundreds of billions of dollars for healthcare “reform.”

Let’s see now…Here’s an article from the Washington Post that summarizes some of Dr. Emanuel’s suggestions: “an independent National Health Board and regional boards modeled on the Federal Reserve System” (You know, so that our healthcare system can be run with the same eagle-eye vigilance and Prussian efficiency that characterizes our banking system)…a government-subsidized, universal “essential benefits package” (Like the insurance you’ve got now? Too bad!), that would be “financed by a dedicated tax that everyone pays”… “an independent Institute for Technology and Outcomes Assessment” (To determine whether your particular ailment should be allotted resources)…If it all sounds strangely like Hillary Care, that could be because Dr. Emanuel was a member of Hillary’s healthcare task force.

Contrary to the leftist mantra that “our healthcare system is broken,” health care in the U.S. is apparently good enough to attract patients from Canada, a country which has the kind of system over which Democrats routinely swoon in adoration. And the articles linked above do not mention some of the more sinister features of Hillary’s plan – most notoriously, the criminalization of healthcare provided outside the parameters of a government-run system. The key is to try to fix what doesn’t work rather than to implement a comprehensive, across-the-board overhaul that will likely reduce the average quality of healthcare.

Does Dr. Emanuel believe that a physician and a patient who privately contract for treatment outside of a government-subsidized program should be jailed? Does he believe that an ostensibly “independent” board should influence the allocation of resources for new research? (And does he truly think that the chances of politically-motivated funding would be zero?) Maybe someone should ask him – on the record.