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Obama advisor would ration medical care to seniors, young children, the demented
By: Mark Tapscott
Editorial Page Editor
07/22/09 2:57 PM EDT
No wonder President Obama is in such a rush to get his health care reform package through Congress before the August recess. And before the public finds out about Ezekiel Emanuel, special advisor to Peter Orzag, Obama's director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and brother to White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.
Emanuel has written in medical journals of how health care should be rationed, with priority given to younger people over seniors and over those suffering from dementia, according to John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA). Ezekiel also believes that very young children should be lower on the priority list than younger people who have received public educations.
Goodman cites an article Ezekiel co-authored with two other men that appeared in the January 31, 2009, edition of the British medical journal, The Lancet. Goodman also cites a 1996 article by Ezekiel that appeared in The Hastings Report. In the latter, which was titled "Where civic republicanism and deliberative democracy meet," Ezekiel argued for limiting health care for “individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens.” He cited "not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia” as an example.
Goodman offers additional analysis on his blog of Ezekiel's presence among Obama's health care advisors. Goodman notes that the health care reform legislation now being crafted in Congress includes a provision designed to ration the availability of MRI, CT and other advanced technology scans that often are critical to identifying dangerous diseases at a sufficiently early stage to enable life-extending treatment:
“An example of what can be done is actually in legislation being written on Capitol Hill. Buried somewhere in the 1,000 plus pages is a provision to severely limit what Medicare pays for CT and MRI scans performed in doctors' offices. This would force elderly patients, for example, to go to the hospital for their radiology — where there are often lengthy waits. Patients in rural areas who must travel long distances to get to hospital-based testing facilities may be discouraged from getting the tests done at all.”
“individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens.” Emanuel wrote, “An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.”
Goodman notes that the World Health Organization estimates that 25,000 cancer patients die in Britain annually as a result of such restrictions on medical scans.
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