Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel on Health Care

Since Obama has, rather inexplicably, delegated most of the details of his key initiative to advisors and Congress, it is a matter of some importance that we know the intellectual and philosophical (as well as the financial and administrative) context in which any health care bill has been crafted. I believe we can largely dismiss the notion of “intellectual and philosophical” context as regards Congress – who among our elected representatives has read the entire bill? How many congressional supporters of ObamaCare have returned to their districts during the August recess to do anything but parrot the President’s unsubstantiated talking points?

No, we should be looking at the key advisors. The New York Post takes a quick look at the ideas of one of those health care insiders, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist who has written extensively on health care issues, and is currently serving as Special Advisor for Health Policy to Peter Orszag, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (as is well known, he is the brother of Rahm Emanuel). The Deafening Silence blog has three long and thoughtful posts on one of Dr. Emanuel’s essays, “The Perfect Storm of Utilization”, and Thomas Miller at the American Enterprise Institute casts a skeptical eye on Dr. Emanuel’s book, Healthcare, Guaranteed: A Simple, Secure Solution for America.

With respect to….well….fishy provisions in both the House and Senate bills themselves, D.J. Drummond at Wizbang spots several piscine clauses right away.