Travel Guru Peter Greenberg and Health Care Guru Zeke Emanuel on Comcast in Bay Area This Month

For those of you in the Bay Area who are subscribers to Comcast, here's a heads-up about two upcoming Commonwealth Club programs that will be broadcast on Comcast cable channel 715:

Travel expert Peter Greenberg will air this Sunday, February 7, at 10 p.m.

Health care expert (and brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel) Zeke Emanuel will air Sunday, February 14, at 10 p.m.

Upcoming Commonwealth Club Programs on Comcast HD

Here's a quick update of the schedule for Commonwealth Club programs to airing on Comcast Channel 715 in the Bay Area. The programs air Sundays at 9 am:

Zeke Emanuel, "American Health Care System," January 3, January 17

Barbara Rose Brooker, "The Viagra Diaries," January 10

Fixing America's Health-Care System

Early this week, President Obama made a landmark decision to grant the federal government, through a new office in the FDA, authority to regulate the content, marketing and sale of cigarettes and other tobacco products. Despite his own well-known cigarette habit, he says his intention is to reduce health risks from tobacco and make cigarettes both less accessible and less inviting to young people. The move, aimed at focusing on health wellness and disease prevention, is in line with his much larger health-care plan for America. He made reference to his proposed health-care agenda in his Tuesday, June 23, 2009, news conference.

“This is legislation that must and will be paid for,” said the president. “It will not add to our deficits over the next decade. We will find the money through savings and efficiencies within the health-care system, some of which we’ve already announced.”

President Obama also stated that the government’s reform would work to lower the cost of health care, and he warned that doing otherwise would leave millions more Americans uninsured. He further emphasized that the current state of the health-care system needs drastic change and that “the status quo is unsustainable and unacceptable.”

“So reform is not a luxury,” said President Obama. “It’s a necessity, and I hope Congress will continue to make significant progress on this issue in the weeks ahead.”

The president’s web site outlines his health-care reform package. Among his recommendations, he cites the necessity to reduce the growth of health-care costs for businesses and government, protect families from bankruptcy or debt, and assure affordability for all Americans. He also supports guaranteeing choice of doctors and health plans, investing in preventions and wellness, improving patient safety and quality of care. Moreover, he advocates ending barriers to coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions.

Will his changes go far enough, or might they go too far? The Commonwealth Club has heard from a number of health-care advocates, economists, and others seeking to change the system. Zeke Emanuel, chair of the Department of Clinical Bioethics at the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health and the brother of Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, spoke to The Club on January 8. (See embedded video below.) Zeke Emanuel urged a roots-and-branches overhaul of the system, but it's not clear that such a change is politically feasible. In his talk, Emanuel said, “Most Americans understand that the system is broken. We understand that we have a problem in this country, and I think it’s very widespread.”



Christina Romer, chair of the Council of Economic Advisors in the Obama Administration, made the economic case for health-care reform in her June 8 speech at Club headquarters. She shared the president’s vision for reform. She observed, “The overarching goal is to develop a cost-effective health-care system that preserves quality, expands coverage, and ensures choice and security for all Americans.” (See video here.)

More recently, former U.S. Secretary of State and former Secretary of Labor George Shultz and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow John Shoven explained their plan for handling the nation's spiraling social service commitments, specifically health care costs and Social Security. See video below.



--Commonwealth Club Media and Public Relations Department

'Serious' Emanuel Brother Aims To Fix Health Care

When Esquire named the three Emanuel brothers as (collectively) one of the 75 most influential people of the 21st century, they called Rahm, president-elect Obama's chief of staff, "the mouthy middle boy" and portrayed younger brother Ari as a petulant change-of-pace character mixed with a little of Rahm's bombastic intensity. The oldest Emanuel, Zeke, is different. He is the low-key, serious brother attempting to fix the nation's foundering health-care system.

Zeke Emanuel's ideas run somewhat off the beaten path, if not controversial. In an appearance of PBS's public affairs program, "NOW," his plan to fix health care involves using vouchers of similar value to what most Americans pay for basic coverage (Watch the clip here).

There is one catch. To pay for the program, a "value added" sales tax of 10 percent, excluding food and other items that disportionately affect the poor, would be added. In California, for example, consumers would be paying more than 18-percent sales tax, something many people might find exorbitant. In the interview, Emanuel points out that the savings in health care and a theoretical jump in earnings would offset the tax.

In a piece for The Huffington Post, Emanuel states his belief that the recent economic downturn may actually help push through health-care legislation that would have otherwise languished in the halls of Congress.

This financial crisis also means Americans may be more willing to forgo gold-plated comprehensive insurance that covers everything with few restrictions. Under the threat of losing everything, Americans may feel content with the guarantee of a decent plan that covers cost-effective treatments with some restrictions on choice and services to save money. This should enhance the chances for a bipartisan deal on health care.

Emanuel, as the chair of the bioethics department at the National Institutes of Health, will likely have some of his ideas within earshot of the new administration working under Tom Daschle at the Department of Health and Human Services.

As one of the leading opponents of doctor-assisted suicide, Emanuel wrote in a 1997 article for The Atlantic that from an ethical view it both violates the Hippocratic Oath and could possibly be used without consent in the future – refuting studies done in the Netherlands.

The Netherlands studies fail to demonstrate that permitting physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia will not lead to the nonvoluntary euthanasia of children, the demented, the mentally ill, the old, and others. Indeed, the persistence of abuse and the violation of safeguards, despite publicity and condemnation, suggest that the feared consequences of legalization are exactly its inherent consequences.

Zeke may be the Emanuel you have never heard about, but The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan says he's just like the others.

Emanuel will discuss his ideas for fixing health care in America this Thursday night at The Commonwealth Club at 6 p.m.