Obama’s Healthcare Adviser Was Right! Obama’s Plan is Worthless!

I rarely agree with anything a liberal Democrat says, but sometimes they hit the nail right on the head. So it is with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, health adviser to President Barack Obama, brother of presidential adviser Rahm Emanuel. As a bioethicist, he has written extensively about who should get medical care, who should decide, and whose life is worth saving.

Dr. Emanuel says that health reform will not be pain free, and that the usual recommendations for cutting medical spending (often urged by the president) are mere window dressing. As he wrote in the Feb. 27, 2008, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA): "Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality of care are merely 'lipstick' cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change."

Dr. Emanuel just described the Democrat healthcare reform plan.

In other words, the Obama plan for financing healthcare reform is worthless, from the mouth of one of his closest advisers.

And this was all known over a year ago.

More recently, White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod emailed that, "It's a myth that health insurance reform would be financed by cutting Medicare benefits." This was sent out the day before Mr. Obama told a Montana town hall that he'd pay for health-care reform by "eliminating . . . about $177 billion over 10 years" for "what's called Medicare Advantage." And it was two days before Mr. Obama told a Colorado town hall he'd cover "two-thirds" of the "roughly $900 billion" of his plan's cost by "eliminating waste," again citing Medicare Advantage.

So who's right? Obama says one thing, his advisers say another. And then Obama tells the American public that his changes won't make anyone give up their current healthcare.

Tell that to the millions in Medicare Advantage. There is no way their current coverage can be continued if Obama makes the cuts in Medicare Advantage he proposes.

If he listens to his advisers, he knows that. He's either as dumb as Ted Kennedy, or as dishonest. Either way America loses.