A Convenient Evolution?
Friday, August 14th, 2009This morning’s Washington Times article quotes Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel as saying his views on killing senior citizens have evolved over time:
Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, the White House official targeted by Sarah Palin and other conservatives as an advocate for health care rationing and “death panels,” said Thursday his “thinking has evolved” on the need to decide who gets treated and who does not.
“When I began working in the health policy area about 20 years ago…I thought we would definitely have to ration care, that there was a need to make a decision and deny people care,” said Dr. Emanuel, a health care adviser to President Obama in the Office of Management and Budget, during a phone interview.
“I think that over the last five to seven years…I’ve come to the conclusion that in our system we are spending way more money than we need to, a lot of it on unnecessary care,” he said. “If we got rid of that care we would have absolutely no reason to even consider rationing except in a few cases.”
Forgive me but I trust Emanuel’s conversion to be a little too convenient to be believed. Betsy McCaughey highlights why we should treat Dr. Emanuel’s conversion with skepticism: (more…)