Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel
For the first time in the Obama presidency, the White House is without an Emanuel. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a health care adviser in the Office of Management and Budget, departed earlier this week. His brother Rahm, President Barack Obama鈥檚 former chief of staff, 聽last fall to run for mayor of Chicago.
Dr. Emanuel will return to his at the National Institutes of Health, an administration official told KHN聽Thursday. He had been on loan to the White House for the past two years, and 鈥渄etails from agencies are, by nature, temporary,鈥� added the official, who spoke on background. 鈥淗e has been an invaluable member of the team, offering insight as a physician and researcher.鈥�
Emanuel had been on detail as a special adviser for health policy to the director of OMB. At NIH he is head of the , a 15-year-old office that draws up guidelines for clinical studies, genetics research and the practice of medicine. In early 2009, Emanuel was also the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research.
His departure is no surprise, says Joe Antos, a budget expert at the right-leaning . 鈥淲e鈥檙e now into the implementation mode. He was there to make high-level policy recommendations.鈥� Emanuel has been an advocate for increasing access to preventive services and for better coordination of patient care.
Antos added, 鈥淗e was absolutely successful in driving home the point that it wasn鈥檛 just about money. It鈥檚 about people鈥檚 well-being.鈥� That made him a stand-out among peers focused on budget issues, Antos said.
But Emanuel鈥檚 insights have also caused controversy the White House might rather have sidestepped. His work as a medical ethicist contemplating end-of-life care, for instance, contributed some of the building blocks for the false 鈥渄eath panel鈥� myth spread by Sarah Palin and New York former Lt. Gov.聽Betsy McCaughey.
Emanuel鈥檚 supporters have argued that鈥檚 a gross mischaracterization of聽his work 鈥� which includes arguing against legalizing euthanasia. Still, the criticism of his academic explorations on whether things like living wills could save money helped fuel opposition to an early聽provision in the Democrats鈥� bill聽that would have paid doctors to counsel patients on end-of-life care, if they choose to receive that service. That provision was removed before the bill passed.
His departure comes alongside another White House move on that provision. Administration officials inserted it into a Medicare regulation last year. This week, they 聽from the regulation, too, because, they said, of a procedural error.
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