Ezekiel Emmanuel MD, Rahm Emmanuel’s brother, has co-authored an interesting article on health care in the Lancet, the British medical journal. Rahm Emmanuel of course is President Obama’s chief of staff, which explains why Zeke is now Obama’s “Special Advisor For Health Policy”, and is currently engaged in the task of turning our health care system upside down. In the article in the Lancet, Ezekiel Emmanuel and his co-authors lay out the various ways of deciding who gets treatment and who doesn’t. Part pf their recommendations for the rationed government health care is that the very young and the old get minimal health care, while the productive get taken care of. I think we’ve seen this one before, and it has always ended in someone in authority deciding who goes to the gas chamber and who does not. Another interesting item is called “Instrumental Value”, where again someone in authority decides that someone of instrumental value to society will get treated first. We’ve seen this one too. The Party bosses get their own hospitals and department stores. Of course, the largest problem in any national health care rationing system is who gets to decide who gets treated, who gets to live, and who gets to die. And we already know who the deciders will be. The deciders will be the politically connected, the liberal elites, the Rahm and Ezekiel Emmanuels of this world.         

 

 

Well now says Rahmie’s brother

We’ll fix this thing up right

And soon we’ll have another

Little bitty health care fight

We want to make things even

We want to make things fair

That’s why we shall be heavin’

Out that nasty old health care

We know right now we have the best

Health system in the world

But we progressives cannot rest

And so the gauntlet’s hurled

You’ve seen the charts you’ve seen the graphs

You know now what’s in store

The young and old get epitaphs

The rest of us will score

Of course we know that some will say

The rich will get the share

That rightfully belongs to they

Who qualify for care

And politics will surely play

A roll in who gets what

The well connected have their way

The rest of you get squat

But best of all we at the top

Already know what gives

We get to say whose life will stop

And get to say who lives