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Emanuel Explained In 2005 Why Euthanasia Would Need an Obama

October 1, 2009 (LPAC)—Writing his section of a 2005 book on how to get away with wholesale cutbacks in health care to Americans, Ezekiel Emanuel — now special health-care advisor to OMB fascist Peter Orszag — discussed potential public resistance and how to deal with it. In his chapter, "Patient v. population: resolving the ethical dilemmas posed by treating patients as members of populations," in the book Ethical Dimensions of Health Policy, Emanuel posits the need to end the "traditional Hippocratic health-care approach" and bring in a "population-based" system to cut costs. He complains of "the dominant Hippocratic tradition of medicine," where doctors have been "inculcated with the notion that their primary duty is to the patient for whom they are caring."

Among the changes he suggests are needed, would be that health insurance would only cover interventions for "illnesses that have a 15% or higher chance of being completely cured or extending life for 5 years." Thus, if the statistical probability from a patient's case indicates that a procedure would have less than a 15% chance to save him, or the odds were that he would live less than 5 years as a result, he would be denied the care to save his life.

Emanuel candidly states that unlike in the past, today's needed "reform" is "no longer liberal and social reform-oriented, but conservative and business-oriented. And the advocates are ... academic leaders, consultants, and chief executives with leading managed-care organizations.... [And such] powerful supporters and financial forces make the odds of success greater than before."

Emanuel warns that the public will be "suspicious" — will feel that their "sacrifices" are made so others may profit. There might be "public campaigns" against the change.

He proposes various techniques and procedures to "allay their suspicions and reassure them about the integrity of the decision-making process" in the denial of care, non-serious proposals such as "openness" in decision-making, and "citizen participation" on the boards deciding the cutbacks.

More seriously, Emanuel's warning does explain why a "sympathetic" figurehead such as Barack Obama would be needed to get away with this attack on the population, whereas a Bush-Cheney regime wouldn't cut it. It also makes clear why fascists such as Ezekiel Emanuel write in convoluted prose, directed to financier strategists. Under recent attack for his euthanasia advocacy, Emanuel has complained that only those educated in philosophy, and not common persons, are qualified to understand what his writings really mean.

The 2005 book, published by Oxford University Press, opens with a chapter written by the old eugenics-euthanasia advocate Daniel Callahan. He avows that "most healthcare systems in the world are facing steadily heavier economic pressures, forcing a variety of reforms that require (usually covert) rationing and other restrictions on health care."

Callahan demands that the idea of curing disease, especially in the elderly, "give way" to "palliative care" and the expectation of death. In the old system, says Callahan, "the chief culprit has been a bias in favor of cure, which has ... been seen as the highest goal ... [and] has led to a disproportionate amount of money being spent on biomedical rather than behavioral research ... and to an emphasis in clinical practice on treatment rather than patient education." Above all, "it is a mistake to allow individual benefit to remain the test of successful policy."

Would fascism help the program?

Callahan writes, "A setting of [new] goals is ... considerably more possible when there is a centralized governmental control of policy. That is, in a closed system. Indeed, in a society such as the United States, where there is a mixed public and private health care system with no central authority, the explicit setting of goals is nearly impossible...."

This book easily explains why Daniel Callahan, a director of the Eugenics Society and the founder of the pro-euthanasia Hasting Center, would have made Ezekiel Emanuel a Fellow of his Center, and why these men are today leaders of the drive for Obamacare.


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