Ezekiel Emanuel

Ezekiel Jonathan "Zeke" Emanuel (born September 6, 1957) is an American oncologist, bioethicist and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

He is the current Vice Provost for Global Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania and chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy.

Emanuel graduated from Amherst College in 1979 and subsequently received his M.Sc. from Exeter College, Oxford, in biochemistry.

He was a member of the first cohort of Faculty Fellows at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard from 1987–88.

Emanuel completed an internship and residency at Beth Israel Hospital in internal medicine.

Subsequently, he undertook fellowships in medicine and medical oncology at the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, and is a breast oncologist.

He simultaneously studied for an M.D. and a Ph.D. in political philosophy from Harvard University, receiving the degrees in 1988 and 1989, respectively.

After completing his post-doctoral training, Emanuel pursued a career in academic medicine, rising to the level of associate professor at Harvard Medical School in 1997.

He soon moved into the public sector, and held the position of Chief of the Department of Bioethics at the Clinical Center of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

Emanuel served as Special Advisor for Health Policy to Peter Orszag, the former Director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Obama administration.

Emanuel entered the administration with different views from President Barack Obama on how to reform health care, but was said by colleagues to be working for the White House goals.

Previously, Emanuel served as the Diane and Robert Levy University Professor at Penn. He holds a joint appointment at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Wharton School and was formerly an associate professor at the Harvard Medical School until 1998 when he joined the National Institutes of Health.

In a 2009 interview Emanuel recalled that in his childhood "worrying about ethical questions was very much part and parcel of our daily routine."

His two younger brothers are former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel and Hollywood-based talent agent Ari Emanuel.

He has an adopted sister, Shoshana Emanuel, who has cerebral palsy.

His father's brother, Emanuel, was killed in the Great Arab Revolt in the British Mandate of Palestine, after which the family changed its name from Auerbach to Emanuel in his honor.

As children, the three Emanuel brothers shared a bedroom and spent summers together in Israel.

All three brothers took ballet lessons in their childhood, which Emanuel says "hardened us and taught us that if you do something unusual, people will take potshots at you."

Emanuel and his brother Rahm frequently argue about healthcare policy.

Emanuel mimics his brother's end of the conversation: "You want to change the whole healthcare system, and I can't even get SCHIP [State Children's Health Insurance Program] passed with dedicated funding? What kind of idiot are you?"

He provided free care to poor immigrants and led efforts to get rid of lead paint that was dangerous for children; as of 2010 he lived in a Chicago suburb.

Emanuel's mother, Marsha, a nurse and psychiatric social worker who was raised in the North Lawndale community on Chicago's West Side, was active in civil rights, including the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).

She attended marches and demonstrations with her children.

Since September 2011, Emanuel has headed the Department of Medical Ethics & Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also serves as a Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor, under the official title Diane S. Levy and Robert M. Levy University Professor.

On November 9, President-elect Joe Biden named Emanuel to be one of the 16 members of his coronavirus advisory board.

In articles and in his book Healthcare, Guaranteed, Emanuel said that universal health care could be guaranteed by replacing employer paid health care insurance, Medicaid and Medicare with health care vouchers funded by a value-added tax.

His plan

would allow patients to keep the same doctor even if they change jobs or insurance plans.

He would reduce co-payments for preventive care and tax or ban junk food from schools.

He criticized the idea of requiring individuals to buy health insurance.

However, he supports Obama's plans for health care reform, even though they differ from his own.

In the article Why Tie Health Insurance to a Job?, Emanuel said that employer based health insurance should be replaced by state or regional insurance exchanges that pool individuals and small groups to pay the same lower prices charged to larger employers.

Emanuel said that this would allow portable health insurance even to people that lose their jobs or change jobs, while at the same time preserving the security of employer based health benefits by giving consumers the bargaining power of a large group of patients.

According to Emanuel, this would end discrimination by health insurance companies in the form of denial of health insurance based on age or preexisting conditions.

In Solved!, Emanuel said that Universal Healthcare Vouchers would solve the problem of rapidly increasing health care costs, which, rising at three times the rate of inflation, would result in higher copayments, fewer benefits, stagnant wages and fewer employers willing to pay for health care benefits.

In an article co-written by Ezekiel Emanuel and Victor Fuchs, Emanuel co-wrote that employer-based health insurance has "inefficiencies and inequities", that Medicaid is "second-class" and that insuring more people without replacing those systems would be to build on a "broken system".

He said, "in the short run they require ever more money to cover the uninsured, and in the long run the unabated rise in health costs will quickly revive the problem of the uninsured."

On November 9, 2020, President-elect Joe Biden named Emanuel to be one of the 16 members of his COVID-19 Advisory Board.

Emanuel is the son of Benjamin M. Emanuel and Marsha (Smulevitz) Emanuel.

His father, Benjamin M. Emanuel, is a Jerusalem-born pediatrician who was once a member of the Irgun, a Jewish paramilitary organization that operated in Mandate Palestine.