Of the many firestorms blazing around the topic of health care, one of the smallest but brightest involves Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, medical “ethicist” and oncologist-advisor to President Obama. Dr Emanuel was broadsided by Betsy McCaughey in a New York Post column here, much to the outrage of all left-minded people. It seems little Betsy had the gall to actually quote the learned doctor, to the effect that we ought to refuse to guarantee medical treatment to patients with dementia, in an article he wrote for the Hastings Center here.
Thoughtful, “progressive” thinkers like Noam Scheiber, Alex Koppelman, and Michael Scherer have all carefully explained that Dr. Emanuel is an important man, an ethicist, a philosopher—the man doesn’t even own a TV set, for God’s sake!—and therefore, well, therefore shouldn’t be held responsible for what he said. As Jake Tapper at ABC News explains, these are “academic words,” “exercises in philosophy,” and therefore, apparently without meaning.
Furthermore, as Alex Koppelman writes in Salon, “The quote McCaughey used here was technically accurate [i.e., completely accurate], but was stripped from the proper context, twisted to distort the actual meaning of Emanuel’s words. Notably, she left out Emanuel’s opening qualifier about the view he was discussing: “Without overstating it (and without fully defending it) not only is there a consensus about the need for a conception of the good, there may even be a consensus about the particular conception of the good that should inform policies on these nonconstitutional political issues [meaning, among other things, guaranteed health care].”
Well, without overstating it, Dr. Emanuel’s opening qualifier was carefully constructed bullshit. Excuse me, doc, but why say “Without overstating it”? Just don’t overstate it, OK? As for “without fully defending it,” I’m sorry, but that was just a lie. The whole reason Dr. Emanuel wrote this little article is because he not only believes “there a consensus about the need for a conception of the good”—a statement he “proves” by quoting three people who think exactly as he does—but he also believes that there ought to be “a consensus about the particular conception of the good that should inform policies on these nonconstitutional political issues.“
Dr. Emanuel goes on to say the following about this “conception of the good,” which he absurdly pretends he isn’t pumping for: “Substantively, it suggests services that promote the continuation of the polity—those that ensure healthy future generations, ensure development of practical reasoning skills, and ensure full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations—are to be socially guaranteed as basic. Conversely, services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.”
So why is it wrong to say that the good doctor is saying that we ought to let the demented wander the streets—if they can—unless they or someone else can pay for their health care with private funds? And the same for anyone else “irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens”? Such as a child with Down syndrome, for example? Or my brother, when he was dying of multiple sclerosis, unable to move and scarcely able to speak. He wasn’t a “participating citizen,” not really, and he clearly wouldn’t be getting better.
In his article, Dr. Emanuel calls for “public forums that present citizens with opportunities to enter into public deliberations on social policies.” Well, doc, you’re in one. And if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Afterwords
Would you like to see Dr. Emanuel heading up a national panel that would determine which services “promote the continuation of the polity”? I wouldn’t.
