Deadly Doctors: O Advisors Want to Ration Healthcare is former New York politician Betsy McCaughey’s attempt to bring attention to the views of Obama’s top healthcare advisors.
THE health bills coming out of Congress would put the decisions about your care in the hands of presidential appointees. They’d decide what plans cover, how much leeway your doctor will have and what seniors get under Medicare.
Yet at least two of President Obama’s top health advisers should never be trusted with that power…Start with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel…Emanuel wants doctors to look beyond the needs of their patients and consider social justice, such as whether the money could be better spent on somebody else.
Emanuel…believes that “communitarianism” should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens . . . An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia” (Hastings Center Report, Nov.-Dec. ‘96).
He explicitly defends discrimination against older patients: “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” (Lancet, Jan. 31).
Find the whole story here.
McCaughey presents alternatives to Obama’s healthcare plan here.
