But another more liberal school of thought, popularized by Obama's budget chief Peter Orszag, health advisor Ezekiel Emanuel and the new Medicare administrator Donald Berwick, says that the government should play a role in studying the "comparative effectiveness" of different treatment options.

FORBES

Ezekiel Emanuel, a doctor whose brother is Mr Obama's chief of staff, wrote a paper for the Lancet, a medical journal, in which he proposed a system for determining who should be first in line for such things as liver transplants or vaccines during an epidemic.

ECONOMIST: Americans fear health reform because they fear the Reaper

Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy expert whose brother is former White House chief of staff (now Chicago mayor) Rahm Emanuel, has an op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal offering advice for dealing with one of ObamaCare's biggest impending problems: the inevitability that medical insurance premiums for the young and healthy will rise so high that it's economically irrational to purchase policies.

WSJ: Crunch Time

Mr Ezekiel and Mr Emanuel, 64, deny the charges.

BBC: Ex-Thanet council leader Sandy Ezekiel 'was not buyer'

Mr Ezekiel and Mr Emanuel deny the charges.

BBC: Sandy Ezekiel

Legal documents related to both properties - in a regeneration area of Margate - showed Emanuel as trustee and Ezekiel as the buyer, which he failed to declare to the council.

BBC: Sandy Ezekiel guilty of four charges of misconduct

The prosecution said Mr Ezekiel effectively bought the properties for himself using his his life long friend Mr Emanuel as a proxy.

BBC: Ex-Thanet council leader Sandy Ezekiel 'was not buyer'