Zeke, Rahm, Ari Emanuel, new HBO series, phasing out Medicare, VAT, and the power in DC

madfloridian

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Fri Jun-19-09 04:02 PM
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Zeke, Rahm, Ari Emanuel, new HBO series, phasing out Medicare, VAT, and the power in DC

Edited on Fri Jun-19-09 04:59 PM by madfloridian

There is already an HBO about Ari Emanuel and his power in Hollywood. Haven't heard much about this new one coming up devloped by Zeke and Ari...guess it will give Zeke Emanuel a vehicle for his health care views. Very interesting, and a very powerful family.

ABC News and Zeke and Ari

Zeke is working in the White House as a major health advisor to Orszag and Obama.

Emanuel is also working with his youngest brother, Ari Emanuel, the inspiration for Hollywood superagent Ari Gold's character in the HBO series "Entourage." They are developing a new television show for HBO about medical ethical issues.

"I've worked with both brothers, the Hollywood brother and Rahm," Emanuel said, "and while you're growing up and you love your brothers and know they're both at the top of their field, sometimes you wonder what makes them good. I don't know Hollywood. I didn't know politics at all. But once you see them in action, I really understand what makes them so, so, so successful."

Successful they are indeed. They do have the power.

Zeke manages to get his views heard. Here is more about his health care plan.

Emanuel has advocated scrapping employer-based health care coverage, outlining his plan in his 2008 book "Healthcare, Guaranteed: A Simple, Secure Solution for America."

Under Emanuel's plan, Medicare and Medicaid would be phased out, and all Americans would be given a voucher that could be exchanged for medical coverage, funded by a value-added tax.

It's a plan that goes much farther than anything advocated by President Obama, who has proposed a more incremental approach, setting aside $634 billion as a down payment toward universal coverage and expanding subsidies to make coverage more affordable.

There is another strong article at The New Republic about the power of Zeke Emanuel and his role in the White House now along side his brother, Rahm, who is Chief of Staff.

Zeke's Anatomy

Emanuel is officially "Special Advisor for Health Policy," and his ambiguous place in (or, rather, outside) the OMB bureaucracy can create minor strains. His memos don't always swim through the normal channels, but they have a knack for finding Orszag's desk.

..."But, perhaps not surprisingly, Emanuel digs deepest into his healthy reserve of enthusiasm for the parts of the plan that dovetail with his own ideas. At the top of this list is a so-called insurance exchange--a regulated market in which people who lack coverage through their employer (and maybe people who work at small companies, though that's still being negotiated) could choose from a variety of private plans, which would offer at least a minimum level of benefits and could not discriminate by health status. "He's a key thinker on the exchange. How it operates. How it interacts with insurance market reform," says the administration official.

On the one hand, the exchange is absolutely central to the Obama plan--it's how the uninsured get covered. So it's worth having Emanuel's considerable brainpower on the problem. On the other hand, one can imagine a future in which the employer-based system gradually withers away, leaving everyone to purchase insurance on the exchange. Though Emanuel scrupulously avoids such discussions, it's hard to believe the thought has never occurred to him.

.."The weekend we spoke, The New York Times Magazine had published a long piece about White House legislative strategy on health care. I asked who from the administration was likely to hammer out the final shape of the package on Capitol Hill. Rahm and Phil Schiliro, the chief White House congressional lobbyist, seemed like a lock, I said. So did Orszag and Nancy-Ann DeParle, the health care czar.

It worries me that Zeke Emanuel is also advising Peter Orszag on how to finance the health care solutions using a national tax.

Still, Orszag has hired a prominent VAT advocate to advise him on health care: Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and author of the 2008 book "Health Care, Guaranteed." Meanwhile, former Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker, chairman of a task force Obama assigned to study the tax system, has expressed at least tentative support for a VAT.

"Everybody who understands our long-term budget problems understands we're going to need a new source of revenue, and a VAT is an obvious candidate," said Leonard Burman, co-director of the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, who testified on Capitol Hill this month about his own VAT plan. "It's common to the rest of the world, and we don't have it."

They vary from 10% to 25% on the national tax.

What would it cost? Emanuel argues in his book that a 10 percent VAT would pay for every American not entitled to Medicare or Medicaid to enroll in a health plan with no deductibles and minimal copayments. In his 2008 book, "100 Million Unnecessary Returns," Yale law professor Michael J. Graetz estimates that a VAT of 10 to 14 percent would raise enough money to exempt families earning less than $100,000 -- about 90 percent of households -- from the income tax and would lower rates for everyone else.

And in a paper published last month in the Virginia Tax Review, Burman suggests that a 25 percent VAT could do it all: Pay for health-care reform, balance the federal budget and exempt millions of families from the income tax while slashing the top rate to 25 percent. A gallon of milk would jump from $3.69 to $4.61, and a $5,000 bathroom renovation would suddenly cost $6,250, but the nation's debt would stabilize and everybody could see a doctor.

And while we are discussing such a thing they are protesting in Manila against just such a tax on food, begging it be removed.

Demonstrators called for a suspension of value-added tax on food in Manila last year. Such a tax is attracting real interest among U.S. policymakers. (By Romeo Gacad -- Agence France-presse Via Getty Images)
VAT gets fresh look

And while nearly the same people have power who had power for years, those who support getting away from the private sector to a type of public option are battling amongst themselves. Hard to make a difference that way.