Unworthy Of Medical Care?

[Alfredo]

Ezekiel Emanuel is director of the Clinical Bioethics Department at the U.S. National Institutes of Health and an architect of Obama's healthcare reform plan. He is also the brother of Rahm Emanuel, Obama's White House chief of staff. Express Riders, the blog of conservative businessman and philanthropist Foster Friess, reports that Ezekiel Emanuel has written that health services should not be guaranteed to "individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens." He also stated, "An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia," according to Friess' site. Friess also points to an equally troubling article co-authored by Emanuel, which appeared in the medical journal The Lancet in January. It read in part: "Unlike allocation [of healthcare] by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination. Every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age."con'd in DB

[Buadhach]

My own comment? This means my son, Chris, would be denied healthcare. He is profoundly retarded. But look at that last quote: "Treating 65-year-olds differently because of stereotypes or falsehoods would be ageist; treating them differently because they have already had more life-years is not." Excuse me? More life years is exactly what age is about!Under this plan, I probably would be denied the artificial hip I need. My son would be denied the medical care he needs. My husband, who is an active physicist and astronomer at the ripe old age of 67, is also a porphyriac(look it up) and would be denied the medical care he needs just because he has had more life-years than many of you. In other words, he is older. So much for respect and honoring the aged. Ethically and morally our culture is sinking faster than a block of concrete in water.

[Shane]

tuppence said: 4 So read the paper, Pam. In socialized health care there are classes of people denied that care, and people like my son are going to be at the top of that list. The Rahms are simply admitting that. My baby granddaughter was a preemie. Perhaps she would not have been allowed to live? This is EXACTLY what is happening in other countries with socialized health care. It is not extreme to note that it would also happen here or that some of those in charge are trying to desensitize people to that. 54 months ago

[huxly]

tuppence said: 2 My own comment? This means my son, Chris, would be denied healthcare. He is profoundly retarded. But look at that last quote: "Treating 65-year-olds differently because of stereotypes or falsehoods would be ageist; treating them differently because they have already had more life-years is not." Excuse me? More life years is exactly what age is about!Under this plan, I probably would be denied the artificial hip I need. My son would be denied the medical care he needs. My husband, who is an active physicist and astronomer at the ripe old age of 67, is also a porphyriac(look it up) and would be denied the medical care he needs just because he has had more life-years than many of you. In other words, he is older. So much for respect and honoring the aged. Ethically and morally our culture is sinking faster than a block of concrete in water. 54 months ago

[Donnachadh]

At that point, since the author of life is no longer caring for us, we must care for ourselves, and that means conservation of material. Someone asked a slightly related question yesterday about entitlements and I'll say again that as we do not value the life of the not-yet-born, we will logically soon not value the life of the been-too-long-since-born. Neither one produces anything. In one culture, that's irrelevant; in another culture, that's everything. Both Ezekiel Emanuel and others in politics are merely saying what folks in the culture are saying: every man for himself and God against all.

[Treffen]

PamPerdue said: 3 My suggestion: whenever you read a sentence that seems to suggest that somebody holds a ludicrous position, ask to see the preceding and succeeding sentences. It's very easy to take a single sentence out of context to make it seem as if somebody holds a more extreme position than they do. Often, I find that passages are excerpted precisely so that the very next or previous sentence radically changes the implied meaning.Emanuel is trying to face up to the fact that there is more demand for health care than we can afford. That ALWAYS means saying "no" to somebody. There is no system under which we all get all the health care we want. So pointing to any system and saying, "But under that scheme X would be denied Y" is vacuous; that's true in every system for some X and Y. The current system denies a great many people health care of various sorts; that's why so much pressure to change it. So I find it hard to either condemn or defend Emanuel's ethics without reading the whole paper. 54 months ago

[Nukpana]

"Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years. "Treating 65-year-olds differently because of stereotypes or falsehoods would be ageist; treating them differently because they have already had more life-years is not." Friess asks: "Are these the values we want undergirding our healthcare system?"

[Fflewdwr]

So read the paper, Pam. In socialized health care there are classes of people denied that care, and people like my son are going to be at the top of that list. The Rahms are simply admitting that. My baby granddaughter was a preemie. Perhaps she would not have been allowed to live? This is EXACTLY what is happening in other countries with socialized health care. It is not extreme to note that it would also happen here or that some of those in charge are trying to desensitize people to that.

[Amot]

tuppence said: 1 "Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years. "Treating 65-year-olds differently because of stereotypes or falsehoods would be ageist; treating them differently because they have already had more life-years is not." Friess asks: "Are these the values we want undergirding our healthcare system?" 54 months ago

[enda]

My suggestion: whenever you read a sentence that seems to suggest that somebody holds a ludicrous position, ask to see the preceding and succeeding sentences. It's very easy to take a single sentence out of context to make it seem as if somebody holds a more extreme position than they do. Often, I find that passages are excerpted precisely so that the very next or previous sentence radically changes the implied meaning.Emanuel is trying to face up to the fact that there is more demand for health care than we can afford. That ALWAYS means saying "no" to somebody. There is no system under which we all get all the health care we want. So pointing to any system and saying, "But under that scheme X would be denied Y" is vacuous; that's true in every system for some X and Y. The current system denies a great many people health care of various sorts; that's why so much pressure to change it. So I find it hard to either condemn or defend Emanuel's ethics without reading the whole paper.