Teddy's Health Care

My gut reaction to Teddy's passing was unsympathetic. He was a man who, in both his personal and political life, was a bulwark against individual responsibility and accountability. For all his power and influence, his actual achievements were limited. To call someone a Lion of the Senate, is to damn with faint praise.

On the other hand, writing in the Journal, Noonan captures what was great and compelling and fundementally American about Kennedy, even for those repulsed by his political idealogy. Un-, or rather, very softly-, spoken in her column is an implicit compare and contrast extremely unfavorable to our current President.

Another, Journal op-ed reminds us that it wasn't long ago that pro-business conservatives were on the Government Health Care bandwagon, and, so, how badly the Administration has played what once was a winning hand.

The attempt to rebrand Universal Health Insurance as TeddyCare is of conflicting value. On one hand, it may make legislation more palatable to seniors. On the other hand, it risks serious backlash. As the Times delicately reported:

...He chose what he called “prudently aggressive” treatments.

“He always admired people who took risks, like Teddy and Kara did,” Mr. Dodd said, referring to two of Mr. Kennedy’s children, who both beat cancer with bold treatments...

Mr. Kennedy deputized Dr. Horowitz, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, to research all treatment options before deciding on an intensive regimen of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation — hardly a clear-cut choice with an almost inevitably lethal disease and a patient of Mr. Kennedy’s age. Some physicians assembled at Massachusetts General Hospital considered his tumor inoperable — and measured his likely survival time between six weeks and a few months.

Voters can be expected to resent that Teddy, for his own care, ignored the evidence-driven medical care, we are being told he made the cause of his life to impose on others.