Ezekiel "Zeke" Emanuel, former Special Advisor for Health Policy to Peter Orszag, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and the Diane and Robert Levy University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania (THE DENVER POST | Joe Amon)

A key architect and a sharp opponent of national health care reform clashed in debate Thursday over how much "Obamacare" limits consumer choice and holds hope of cutting costs.

The Affordable Care Act strips exactly the kind of freedom consumers need to make better care choices and reduce costs, health economist Linda Gorman argued at a panel sponsored by The Post and the University of Denver.

Gorman of the Independence Institute said the subsidies and patient-managing plans of "Obamacare" wipe consumer choice out of the picture. By contrast, Gorman said, procedures where buyers know the price and have real choice, like Lasik eye surgery and urgent care centers, have seen costs come down through true competition.

Linda Gorman, former academic economist and Senior Fellow and Director of the Health Care Policy Institute at the Independence Institute (THE DENVER POST | Joe Amon)

"Our health care system is the fifth largest economy in the world," and still tens of millions of Americans go without care, responded Dr. Zeke Emanuel, who helped write portions of "Obamacare" for the White House. The new state insurance exchanges will be a pro-consumer marketplace, he argued, allowing people to choose basic benefits or pay more for gold-plated plans.

Emanuel is a fierce advocate for going even farther toward universal health care, while Gorman has criticized reforms for blowing up state and federal budgets while restricting consumers with mandates.

Doctors and hospitals will join to manage each patient's care more efficiently, and win rewards from insurance funds if they save money and improve quality, Emanuel said. The 2010 reform signing was "historic," and marked an end to a system that pays for doing more procedures instead of providing good care, he said.

Americans have tried that managed-care system in earlier decades, and many wound up hating the "capitated" model where they were denied care they wanted in order to save money, Gorman responded. Such a system also pushes insurers to cherry-pick healthier patients to avoid high costs, she said.

Voters need to know Republican reform alternatives are draconian, Emanuel said. He claimed the Romney-Ryan budget proposals would cut Medicaid funding up to 75 percent, a disaster for states and poorer patients.

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Health care battle has plenty of fight left, Denver panel shows