ObamaCare was designed to a significant degree by a man who believes that living past the age of 75 is living too long. Think about that.

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel’s “Why I Hope to Die at 75” appeared last week in The Atlantic. It contains profundities such as this:

Doubtless, death is a loss. It deprives us of experiences and milestones, of time spent with our spouse and children. In short, it deprives us of all the things we value.

Emanuel takes pains to say that he believes in getting help for the terminally sick rather than assisted suicide. And he apparently has no plans to off himself at 75. But his view of life is—well—immature.

Like ObamaCare, Emanuel’s worldview is built on theoretical constructs that don’t necessarily apply to life. Though he admits that there are outliers, he sees creativity in one’s life span by looking at charts—creativity peaks about twenty years into a career, he informs us, and declines at about the age of 40 or 45.

Glad nobody told Ben Franklin, who undertook diplomatic negotiations in Europe at the age of 77 and was active at the Constitutional Convention at the age of 81! Indeed, despite the chirpy tone of Dr. Emanuel’s Atlantic article his prominence in designing ObamaCare lurks behind every word:

Emanuel is a notorious proponent of medical rationing, and has long advocated denying care to the elderly. In fact, just prior to his 2009 appointment to President Obama’s Coordinating Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research, he co-authored an article in the Lancet which promotes allocation of health care resources according to the age of the patient. In its introduction, he and his co-authors recommend a rationing system that would prioritize “people who have not yet lived a complete life” yet go on to claim, “Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination.”

Good luck selling that to Granny, who may have her own ideas about the optimum point at which to shuffle off her mortal coil. But, like all progressives, Emanuel is less concerned about the needs of individuals than those of the collective. His Lancet piece is obviously a set of socialist shibboleths, and it is by no means the only such manifesto he has written. In this 2013 article for the Journal of the American Medical Association, he bemoans the hidebound attitude of a physician community that still insists on putting the health of individual patients before what he perceives to be the good of society.

Although the tone of Dr. Emanuel’s article is cheery and he tries to portray this as just one guy’s belief, it should alarm us all that this is the guy who played such an important part in creating a health system which will treat people who do not share his views about the value of life past the age of 75.

John Nolte summed it up well on Breitbart:

The phrase "the banality of evil" gets bandied about a lot. Emanuel's column, which in reality is a public service announcement meant to begin a debate about the way in which we prioritize healthcare, takes the prize in that department.

And yes, Emanuel's article is an act of evil, written by a soulless bureaucrat with no respect or compassion for the individual. Emanuel's only concern is for the collective, the State. And he is exactly the kind of "medical professional" many feared would grab hold of our healthcare system if the Federal government got their hands on it — which it now has.

Thanks Obama!

We should be afraid–very afraid.