The eldest Emanuel emerges
Success runs in the family of Obama's health-care adviser
By Judith Graham and Noam N. Levey | Tribune reporters
March 30, 2009
He's the eldest brother, a doctor and a scholar with a resume the size of a small book. Though brothers Ari and Rahm are both celebrities, he's the one they think could someday win the Nobel Prize.
Now, Ezekiel Emanuel has become something of a public figure, like his famous siblings, as he pursues a new challenge: trying to help the Obama administration reform the health-care system.
It's an enormously difficult task given the nation's economic woes, and one for which the former Chicagoan appears uniquely well suited but also surprisingly unprepared.
Zeke, as everyone calls him, is an accomplished academic with boundless energy and impressive medical and policy credentials who has written a well-received book on health-care reform. He has the ear of Rahm, the president's chief of staff: The brothers talk every day.
Yet Zeke has never been part of a political team or toed a party line. The reforms he has championed—giving all Americans insurance vouchers and getting rid of employer-based health-care coverage—bear little resemblance to those embraced by the president.
That doesn't bother the 51-year-old, who's serving as special adviser to Peter Orszag, the director of the Office of Management and Budget. The job puts Zeke Emanuel at the table with a small circle of trusted insiders crafting health-care policy.
...
Although well-known in medical and academic circles, Zeke Emanuel was unfamiliar to many health-care reform advocates when he joined the White House team late last year.
Some were put off by proposals in his book, including a plan to scrap Medicare, Medicaid and employer-based health insurance in favor of vouchers that people could use to purchase coverage.
...
chicagotribune.com
econlog.econlib.org |
