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Kennedy declares health reform “the cause of my life”

Posted by: Peggy Denker on Jul 22, 2009

Writing in the latest issue of Newsweek, Senator Edward Kennedy has called on the nation to reform our health care system:

. . . quality care shouldn't depend on your financial resources, or the type of job you have, or the medical condition you face. Every American should be able to get the same treatment that U.S. senators are entitled to.

Kennedy writes movingly about his own illness and about coping with serious illnesses that struck his children. He also tells the heartbreaking stories of Americans like Cassandra Wilson, a 14-year-old former competitive ice skater whose parents had to sell her skating equipment to pay for her treatments for petit mal seizures. Or Mary Dunn, a 58-year-old diabetic who had heart bypass surgery: Mary and her husband are both losing their jobs - and their insurance - when the school where they teach closes down. "What am I to do?" Mary pleads.

After recounting the frustrating history of past, unsuccessful reform efforts - interspersed with such important gains as Medicare, Medicaid, community health centers, and the Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP - Kennedy exhorts Congress to enact reform now:

Everyone won't be satisfied-and no one will get everything they want. But we need to come together, just as we've done in other great struggles-in World War II and the Cold War, in passing the great civil-rights laws of the 1960s, and in daring to send a man to the moon. If we don't get every provision right, we can adjust and improve the program next year or in the years to come. What we can't afford is to wait another generation.

He goes on to say:

I've heard the critics complain about the costs of change. . . . What I haven't heard the critics discuss is the cost of inaction.

Noting that "We're almost there," Kennedy concludes:

I am resolved to see to it this year that we create a system to ensure that someday, when there is a cure for the disease I now have, no American who needs it will be denied it.