The Passing of the Kennedys and Healthcare Reform

Eunice Kennedy Shriver was buried yesterday. Not to be morbid, but she'll likely be followed in the not too distant future by her two surviving siblings. When Brother Teddy and Sister Jean go, a remarkable arc in American history will be have come to an end.

For the purposes of this blog, it begins with one symbol of America, John F. Kennedy. A man who famously declaimed, "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country..." It was rhetoric to be sure, but moving nonetheless. In 2009, however, such sentiments would get you heckled. Americans are no longer interested in making any sacrifices; reform is treated not as a noble betterment to the collective good but as a threat to "our way of life."

Nothing symbolizes this better than the inevitable demise of Ted Kennedy. He has been a tireless champion of better healthcare for all, but his own failing health has robbed the Senate of a powerful organizing nucleus for orderly debate. He may not always have been a paragon of perfect virtue, but the Senator has spoken with a gravitas and conviction that Max Baucus cannot quite duplicate in his stead. The absence of such voices leaves us with the sort of anarchy that leads to frivolous and fallacious discussions of death panels and similar nonsense.

So with the de facto passing of the Kennedys, we have truly reached an end. What comes next, it seems, is an age in which the operative question has changed. Today, it is: what can America do for me? This, by the way, is not the "me" voice of the Generation X but rather the the "mine" of the Baby Boomers. That's why I don't think that this is really a debate about healthcare at all; its more like a desperate last stand in support of a a status quo that gave us big cars, big houses and big credit. Unfortunately, it's just not realistic to carry in this spirit.

Sacrifice may not be a popular sentiment, but opposing the necessity for change will not relieve the requirements for broad reforms in many aspects of our lives. We already spend twice as much on health care as healthier countries and the excess is killing our economy. So even those who don't support reform out of a sense of civic obligation should realize that one way or another change is coming. Better to do it now, in an orderly fashion, then in the midst of even bigger crisis later.

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Comments

[Ana Sierra]

I agree with much of what you say; however, I disagree with your statement that this is the voice "of the "mine" of the Baby Boomers. That's why I don't think that this is really a debate about healthcare at all; its more like a desperate last stand in support of a a status quo that gave us big cars, big houses and big credit." Many of us Baby Boomers, particularly the ones at the younger end, such as myself, have gotten the scraps of the big money boon, which means very little to nothing. This actually is more of a class difference than a generational difference in thinking. It's also more of a philosophical difference between right and left. I don't see that younger voters are as involved as they need to be in this debate.

Nonetheless, it's as you say, we're missing an important, an organizing voice in the health care debate.

[superjumbomortgage]

I am entering my junior year of undergrad and picked up this blog while I was browsing a for information related medics. I m pretty set on going to med school but of course have my doubts which some of them is answered here..

[CaptD]

Why is it that we the folks that are paying for the Health Care of Congress (and everything else) have to put up with all this disinformation?

I say, either get on with a "Great Plan" for all Americans or instantly repeal the coverage that Congress is now getting, because they don't deserve any better coverage than we do!

It's put up or Shut Up time for all Congress..­. Make quality health care affordable or enjoy poor care like the rest of America has...
I suggest that to make the proposed Health Plan easy to understand, we should demand that Congress should agree to void their current Health Care plans and accept the proposed Health Plan that they want the rest of America to use! That way, we all would get quality care and not just a token plan change!

[Michael B. Laskoff - Huffpost Blogger]

I cannot fault your logic. Currently, Congress has the advantage of living within the boundaries of the golden rule: he who has the gold, makes the ruies. There is, I hear, another version of the golden rule capable of yielding more ethical results. As you should suggest, we should give that one a try and see what happens.

[DDKAHALAS]

The essential problem we face: we live in a Fascist Country. Everything is run by and for the huge military industrial complex and they are making the"difficult choices" The global elite are running not just this country but the world.

Obama is not trying to"kill Grandma". but who knows who the global elite wants to kill????
it may not be just Grandma. there is great concern by industrialists like Rockerfeller over the huge over population in the age of Global warming.

[bobmarch]

First off, people do have access to health care; it is currently being funded (the un-insured) by the insured folks. 2nd) anybody recall the 70's and flood insurance? Used to be that this insurance was private then, due to excessive flooding over consecutive years, the federal gov't began to compete with the private insurers. And who do you get flood insurance from now? Only the Gov't ! This notion that fed. health insurance will not compete with private insurance (and force it out of existence/like flood insurance) is a bald face untruth - Obama knows this & his supporters (I have seen youtube vids from 2007 confirming this). The goal, or inevitable end, shall be the gov't being the only provider of health care insurance in this country. And to see how that will turn out, we have only the flood insurance to examine .. its a mess, hugh deficit, poorly managed ! I don't want congress to decide any part of my health options; they have no power provided in our constitution and I dont need some idiot congressman telling me & my doctor what we can & cannot do. Congress & Obama have zero clue as to the costs either; READ the 1000 page bill when it comes to taxation clauses and this is quite clear ...

[Michael B. Laskoff - Huffpost Blogger]

1. When the uninsured have to get their healthcare in the emergency room, everyone loses. It's the most expensive way to deliver care.

2. Private companies stopped issuing flood insurance because it was unprofitable owing to the number of claims. Often that's because whole towns or sections of them had been built in flood plains.

3. The person now deciding your healthcare is a bureaucrat working in an insurance company, likely with no medical training. This person is accountable to shareholders and management, not voters. Don't fool yourself into thinking that doctors make all the important decisions under the current system.

4. Every time that you espouse the superiority of private industry, I will remind you that AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Chrysler and General Motors all went bankrupt. None of them were government run. Private does not guarantee better.

[CJWebber]

Well who can argue with youtube vids.

[outnow]

WRONG! An emergency room will only stabilize an acute illness and discharge the patient. That is not providing care on your dime. Irt is merely stabilizing a patient and often dumping him onto the street. You may be qualifed retroactively for an emergency Medicaid sponsered benefit or you may not.

RIGHT! Only an idiot would build his house on sand.

WRONG! An HMO is a gatekeeper and even a PPO, which allows you to choose your specialist, has a "utilization committee," and numerous exclusions from coverage, such as bone marrow transplants for cancer which they deem to be "experimen­tal."

Doctor provide medical treatment, not insurance company bean-counters.

Insurance is only good if you crash your car or your house burns down. Where does the Constitution give insurance companies the right to make medical care decisions - but they do every day. Medical decision should be made by physicians
licensed to practice, not insurance companies.

The purpose of insurance is to spread risk by pooling those risks and by underwriting. But when it comes to indemnifying the loss, the claims department is extremely hardnosed and oftentimes even using "bad faith" or fraudulent tactics against the ill and elderly.

[dessertsfirst]

"We already spend twice as much on health care as healthier countries and the excess is killing our economy.".­... and we are the 37th healthy nation in the world. What is wrong with this picture?

People are hard pressed to pay insurance premiums, yet, in many companies, the CEOs make exorbitant salaries keeping the stockholders happy. To help their bottom line, health care is denied, and premiums are cancelled for some trumped up "reason". (This is rationing of health care, btw).

I worked in a hospital during Bushie's term, and was falsely heartened to hear the buzz words "patient centered care". I was even on a study group on how to implement patient centered care in our hospital. What I learned was that patient centered care had NOTHING to do w/ patients. It was all about developing a conveyor belt of care, that the patients would find it necessary to adapt to... it would help the hospital's bottom line by processing patients more efficiently.

The only way we are going to change health care for the better in this country, is to get back to actually providing health care to the PEOPLE, instead of trying to squeeze every penny, nickel and dime out of people to feather the pockets of big corporations, and their stock holders...­. interesting, but stock holders should remember that they might get sick too....

[Michael B. Laskoff - Huffpost Blogger]

Damned right. We are letting private companies ration health care without acknowledging the fact. Like children, we ignore the obvious in the hopes that it won't be true or impact us. Perhaps we should slowly pull our heads from the sand and confront reality. If nothing else, it will improve our posture. :)

[mcmchugh99]

In the Second Gilded Age of the last 30 years, American has done a great deal indeed for the rich, but very little for the middle class or working class, except send millions of jobs overseas and break organized labot. The free market-Republican era has been a massive redistribution of wealth UPWARD. For Republicans, that is the natural order of things, although it has not been that way always and everywhere.

To be sure, the majority of people have gotten so used to a government that sides with the rich and powerful, they have trouble even imagining that it would do anything for tose lower down the food chain--and certainly not do anything for them honestly and efficiently.

That in and of itself has beenn a major ideological vitory for free market fundamentalists over the last 30 years, and they are still on message, even though their system has collpased.


If this is to become a Second Progressive Era, one of our many tasks is to present a new public option in ideas and philosophy, a narrative that competes with the bankrupt ideology of the free market Right. Why is it so difficult to compete with a party that hasn't had any new ideas since the 19th Century?

[Michael B. Laskoff - Huffpost Blogger]

I look at this way. Instead of getting all twisted and distracted by talk of Canada and the UK, both of which are healthier than we are, we should be talking about France. They seem to have the best healthcare in the world with a hybrid system. Since we're moving in that direction, maybe we should be studying their system to understand what actually works.

[dreadylocks]

Don't you remember 2003? We may not be calling them freedom fries anymore, but the last thing Obama needs tacked onto right-wing descriptions to him along with muslim, elitist, racist, is 'french.'

I wish it were more ok to like france and think that they can do some things better than us... Well, I guess it depends who you talk to, but what is the world coming to when you have to be careful who you tell that you like france. sheesh

[TXHUSKER1]

Until we address tort reform, we will never truly address our health care issues. Why is it the Democrats won't allow tort reform to be part of this issue? Too many campaign donations keep this off the table. This is the problem with them trying to do anything responsibly ---too many groups that they have to make happy and the heck with the individual.

[Michael B. Laskoff - Huffpost Blogger]

You're spot on. But lets not just blame the insurance companies, pharma companies, hospital companies and lawyers. What about the corn lobby? The sugar lobby? And let's not forget the tobacco lobby? There are a lot of people with influential voices in DC who contribute to the unnecessarily poor state of American health.

[trubeliever52]

Tort reform is what the Republicans keep touting but they tend to forget that those states that have passed tort reform have not experienced any reductions in private health care insurance. Lawsuits only constitute 2% of the cost for health care. The majority of the cost for private health care is administration. Look at what Hemsley of United Health Care is getting paid - a fortune!!

[mbaty]

We can make the changes gracefully if we are willing to do it. But I don't think it's about sacrifice. I think it's about Simplification. We've got to simplify our society. Americans have been sacrificing for decades--but sacrificing so that their children get to eat and have a roof over their heads, rather than "sacrificing" in non-military service to the country. And a big part of the problem is that our society ties survival to money. And then money becomes the gatekeeper, empowering some, disempowering many, and creating the incentive to either keep things the way they are or to disregard the larger impacts of 'profitable' endevours. Simplify. What do we need? We all need food, clean water, shelter, preventative health care and occasionally interventionary health care, and practically we all need transportation. The more we focus on using our resources productively for the sustainable good of future generations, the better we will be. Wealth cannot be measured in just money. And similarly, our money is just a figment of our imagination that we are all agreeing is real. We can come up with billions of it when the situation requires it. If we are going to use this monetary system we might as well spend the money on things that will "keep on giving" as the saying goes. And if you want to talk sacrifice, you will have to look at those who are profiting from the status quo, because they are the ones holding us back.

[Michael B. Laskoff - Huffpost Blogger]

It's pretty clear that we measure the 'wealth' of countries in a distorted way. That distortion causes some but not all of the problems that we have. Nevertheless, we live in a world of finite resources and possibilities. Inevitably that means sharing the wealth more equitably will require some of those who have excess – more than they can possibly use – to give up some of this.

Many would dismiss this idea as socialism or welfarism – to coin a term – but the reality is that this sort of tariff purchases social stability (safety) which is right up there with food, clean water and shelter. It's hard to enjoy your excess when mobs of 'have nots' are trying to take it from you by force.

[Nishnabe]

Michael, thanks for a nice eulogy of a family and generation steeped in true noblesse oblige. My grandmother insisted her mother (maiden name Fitzgerald) was related to the Kennedys and she held hope for the family. We lived through the assasinations and stumbles and hoped. Hold out hope that Ted is able to attend the signing of the bill.

[dreadylocks]

noblesse oblige? that's some kind of big dog, right?

:P apologies to terry pratchett

[noneIn2008]

Gotta love the Kennedy HMO success?

[mychagal]

Your blog is short but sweet. As a baby boomer myself, I am shocked to see other baby boomers acting like poor white trash thugs. I wouldn't call outrageous behavior at town hall meetings civic obligation, but rather civic ignorance, stupidity, lunacy and the complete determination of pharmaceutical companies, the fringe element, corporate greed, and corrupt lobbying firms to keep health care reform debates from taking place, let alone passing. This is fascism on the part of these souless entities and individuals. This is anything but democracy. That's keeping the status quo. Those that I have outlined are an army of people with no souls, Palin, who has the insatiable need to stay in the limelight, should be ignored completely. Like a child, she is a negative attention getter. As with many children, behavior modification would dictate to not put any attention on this behavior. People have been listening to her and the results are unconscionable and shameful.

I have already stated why this is happening, but indulge me. Where is the outrage by the republicans that as the richest country in the world, we are ranked # 37 in health care. France is #1. If the republicans want to win back power, why don't they do things that will make a difference and gain votes that way?

[Michael B. Laskoff - Huffpost Blogger]

One thing to note: the pharma companies support reform, at least according to the head of the Kaiser Family foundation. (See transcript of the latest Bill Moyer's Journal.)

As to the Republicans, we all know that it's a lot easier to tear things down then to build them up. That's why they criticize rather put forward a comprehensive plan of their own. And that's actually a shame: the Democrats don't have the lock on "right" answers, and we'd all benefit from an honest contest of good idea. It won't happen, but it's a nice thought.

[TXHUSKER1]

I have heard a number of good ideas from the Republicans that appear to be much better than what we are currently hearing out of our democratic congress. The problem is, you have to listen to Fox news to hear them since the Democrats won't let these be presented for discussion or vote. They would rather tear apart our whole system rather than make improvements to what millions are currently happy with. Until the Democrats truly let this be a bipartisan effort, you will have people like me joining the "mobs" to complain.

[DinkSinger]

"[S]he'll likely be followed in the not too distant future by her one surviving sibling."

There are two surviving siblings. In addition to the senator, Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith is alive.

[Michael B. Laskoff - Huffpost Blogger]

Now this is a helpful comment. Thank you.

[DinkSinger]

You're welcome, but I wouldn't be too sure Jean will follow "in the not too distant future". After all, her mother, Rose, lived to 104.

[bessielil]

Thanks for fixing the needless apostrophe in the header. Now nab that one in the middle.

So with the de facto passing of the Kennedy's [omit] , we have truly reached an end.

[Michael B. Laskoff - Huffpost Blogger]

Thank you for the feedback.

Here's the deal. I blog. I have ADHD. (Sometimes I blog about having ADHD.) For all the education, I still struggle with spelling and grammar. I wish it were not the case, but that's the reality whether I like it or not.

Now, I could deal with this issue most easily by not blogging on the Huffington Post and therefore not opening myself up to embarrassment. Instead, I choose to accept my shortcomings (in this regard) and express myself anyway.

Having said that, I am certainly open to future assistance and presume that I may rely upon you for editorial assistance.

[bessielil]

Sure. I didn't intend to embarrass you or be prissy. I appreciate it when people point out an error I've made, because I don't want anything to get in the way of what I want to say. In fact, I didn't want the note to be posted. I just didn't know what else to do. Most of us struggle with spelling and grammar, me among them. Communal editing. Why not?

[medon]

Congress is totally pay-to-play in health care as in everything else. Ted Kennedy has not PRODUCED any meaningful health care changes despite all his Irish blustering about it. Meanwhile Congress has voted itself and luxuriates in one of the most generous health care packages in the world. Why not just sign everyone up for that one?

Oh – the excess of health care costs is downing the US economy? Gimme a break. Everyone seems to ignore the $T price tag for our 2 latest failed military operations now being generaled by 0Bama. The US has been high jacked by the military-industrial complex.

[Michael B. Laskoff - Huffpost Blogger]

War's are expensive but they end. 16-17% of gross GDP going to health care and rising predictably at 6-7% per year is structural. And say what you want about Senator Kennedy, but it's interesting to note that Massachusetts offers near universal health care, a feat that is supposed to be impossible.

[TXHUSKER1]

Unfortunately, the universal healthcare in the state of Massachusetts is not working so well. They still have many uninsured and they are running out of money to support the system. It is not working so well, so why would we want to emulate that?

[bobmarch]

Mass. is free to do as it wishes but the federal gov't must behave under the restraints of our constitution. So, where in the constitution does it allow the fed. gov't to do what they are proposing w/a single payer (gov't) system. And where are they allowed to be involved w/ education either? If you are to lower health care costs how? Lowering the pay of doctors? It didn't work in china and it wont work here. Your not going to get 24% savings by wishing it. Their plan has zero requirements on this savings they purport they'll see. No clause that aboilishes the program if it is a disaster & then there will be no private health care option. Health care is not a right nor should we make it one.

[Michael B. Laskoff - Huffpost Blogger]

Thanks for the kind words. "Mob" is an interesting and scary word. It's also the right one. MBL