Ezekiel Emanuel was a major architect of Obamacare, is currently an important adviser to the Biden campaign, and in my view, is a good chance for secretary of Health and Human Services if the former vice president is elected.
Biden has said he wants to add a public option to the existing Obamacare law. But I suspect the policy would go way beyond that. Here is Emanuel’s money-shuffling proposal for health-care reform. From a KCRW interview conducted by Warren Olney:
One of the important results of my book is that with single payer, we understand this to mean the government pays hospitals, the government pays doctors. But there’s also single payer where people pay into the government and then the government pays then private insurance companies. People get to choose their private insurance company and then that private insurance company is responsible for coordinating and organizing the care. That latter model where you have a choice of private insurance company exists in the Netherlands and in Germany and I think that kind of model could be well adapted to the United States.
That sure seems like an inefficient approach. And what kind of “choice” would we really have, since the government would clearly dictate coverage parameters as happened under Obamacare?
Emanuel is a health-care technocrat who wants to impose a one-size-fits-all system for the entire country. Considering his influence in Democratic circles generally and Joe Biden specifically, that is a fact worth knowing.