Medicare for All! Ban Private Insurance! Say No to Sickness Care! Watching the Panderer’s Paradise Review … er… Democratic Debates, I couldn’t help but be swept up by a feeling of reliving the Obamacare train wreck. The public posturing of Democrats is to portray the American medical system as dominated by mustache-twirling villains lashing innocent virgins to the railroad ties, while they – in their white hats and sparkly cowboy shirts – come riding to the rescue. MOAR GUBMINT!

Why are we at 2009 again? And why is Obamacare architect, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, turning up in the pages of the NYTimes to push the nationalized medical care wagon?

Profit as a Dirty Word

To prime American citizens into accepting nationalized medicine, Democrats in both nights of Debate #2, went full-throat demagogue. Obama’s infamous “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” was ignored in the rush to see who could ban medical choice faster. By golly, you are going to lose your doctor, even your private insurance, and you will love it! CUZ BETTER

TAPPER: Thank you Congressman. So Senator, let’s talk about that. If Medicare for all is enacted, there are more than 600,000 union members here in Michigan who would be forced to give up their private healthcare plans. Now, I understand that it would provide universal coverage — but, can you guarantee those union members that the benefits under Medicare for all will be as good as the benefits that they’re representatives — their union reps fought hard to negotiate?

SANDERS: Well two things, they will be better because Medicare for all is comprehensive — it covers all healthcare needs. For senior citizens it will finally include dental care, hearing aids and eyeglasses.

Do you believe Bernie? Me, neither. He made several outrageous, misleading statements like “the health care industry made $100 billion in profits last year.”

Let’s pause to note that health insurance has a low profit margin of 4-5%. Ahem.

Funny how Bernie the Red busts a gasket over someone else’s billions when his own plan will cost $32.6 TRILLION! Boy howdy and he wasn’t the only one rending their garments over the audacity that a publicly-held company might like to make a tad more than cost.

Warren: “These insurance companies do not have a God-given right to make $23 billion in profits and suck it out of our health care system.”

Oops! Obviously they didn’t check out their fake talking points with each other.

We also have Kamala Harris who spent the evening dodging questions on whether she’d allow people to choose to have any private insurance. It took another day and another interview to drag it out of her.

Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris says she will eliminate employer-based insurance planspic.twitter.com/DGjG9cXKZy

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) August 1, 2019

Medicare for all – rationing by any other name

Ezekiel Emanuel was one of the chief architects of Obamacare, embarrassed but defiant over the obvious failures of his work. One of the cost-saving features of ObamaCare was to be an ::cough:: independent ::cough:: commission to determine the kind of medical care people would be allowed to receive and to set prices.

Sarah Palin scraped off the dry, academic description and called the rationing board for what it was: A Death Panel.

And while the IPAB was finally repealed, Emanuel seems to take heart in the new crop of candidates. Though, this time, he soft sells his approach.

Democrats are deeply concerned about achieving universal coverage. The simple way to do that is not through a single-payer Medicare for All plan, which faces daunting political opposition. Instead, they can get coverage for most of the remaining 28 million or so Americans with auto-enrollment. […] Democrats need to endorse national, not just Medicare, drug price negotiations that use a value-based pricing framework — linking drug prices to their health benefits in reducing mortality and morbidity — international comparisons and affordability for the average citizen. If the negotiations are not successful, then the government should unilaterally set maximum drug prices.

Did you catch that last bit? Negotiation would just be proforma as Government bureaucrats would have the power to set any price they wanted.

Second, hospital prices are soaring and must be contained. […] Researchers at Yale calculate that capping prices for inpatient care for private insurers at 120 percent of Medicare would save about 20 percent of those costs, approximately $90 billion per year. That cap may be too aggressive, but a cap of 140 percent would save more than $30 billion.

Even John Delaney couldn’t help but express alarm during the debate at the willingness to cap payments to hospitals under Medicare for All! saying

“I’ve been going around rural America, and I ask rural hospital administrators one question, “If all your bills were paid at the Medicare rate last year, what would happen?” And they all look at me and say, “We would close.”

Don’t be fooled by Emanuel’s soft-soap approach this time. The man has a long record of advocating the allocation of medical care based on the utility of an individual’s worth to society, something he deems the “Complete Lives System”.

In the June 18, 2008, issue of JAMA, Dr. Emanuel blames the Hippocratic Oath for the “overuse” of medical care: “Medical school education and post graduate education emphasize thoroughness,” he writes. “This culture is further reinforced by a unique understanding of professional obligations, specifically the Hippocratic Oath’s admonition to ‘use my power to help the sick to the best of my ability and judgment’ as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of cost or effect on others.” […]

Dr. Emanuel believes doctors should serve two masters, the patient and society, and that medical students should be trained “to provide socially sustainable, cost-effective care.” One sign of progress he sees: “the progression in end-of-life care mentality from ‘do everything’ to more palliative care shows that change in physician norms and practices is possible.”

To be sure that palliative care for people who sincerely choose it to make their dying more comfortable is a legitimate choice to be honored. However, Emanuel has long advocated nudging that care at odds with a person’s wishes.

Dr. Emanuel makes a clear choice: “When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get changes that are attenuated.”

Ten years ago Sarah Palin endured outrage, harassment and mocking over her “Death Panel” assessment of Obamacare. And yet it brought attention to one of the major policy makers and his ideology, including that dying at age 75 is a worthy goal. That attention drove him into keeping a low profile.

Until now. Until the cry of Medicare for All! has him slithering into the public square again.

And that’s unacceptable.

featured image, cropped, by David Mark, Pixabay license.