Teddy Kennedy, the famous drowner of women and the Binge Drinker of Hyannisport, still wants to see health care reform before he dies from brain cancer. He no longer comes to the Capitol building in Washington, but instead works from home, after many surgeries that the regular people could not afford now, much less then when we must, under the new proposed plans, ration our care.
“I have enjoyed the best medical care money (and a good insurance policy) can buy. . . . Every American should be able to get the same treatment that U.S. senators are entitled to,” Kennedy wrote in an unusually personal essay published in this week’s Newsweek, adding near the end of the article: “We’re almost there.”
He cited his sophisticated course of treatment — risky surgery at Duke University Medical Center to remove part of the tumor, proton-beam radiation at Massachusetts General Hospital and multiple rounds of chemotherapy — as a privilege of the rich.
“My wife, Vicki, and I have worried about many things, but not whether we could afford my care and treatment.”
latimes.com
Don’t you just love the candor with which he just pours out the fact that you or I could not afford the treatment he got? “A privilege of the rich.” Yes, Teddy, I guess it is- how nice of you to point it out. It’s too late to challenge Teddy to use the same insurance that he wants to force others to have, but it truly should be written into the plan that our politicians should be subject to the same treatment options and restrictions that everyone else has to abide by. Perhaps then they would not scrimp, or ration care, or score people according to their “worth” to society.
The tragedies Kennedy experienced in his life — his brothers’ deaths, his son Ted Jr.’s partial leg amputation from bone cancer, his daughter Kara’s lung cancer — shaped a commitment to universal healthcare that spans nearly half a century. His wealth and influence enabled him to retain a brain specialist in an attempt to save his brother, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and find cutting-edge cancer care for his children, options he frequently has said every family deserves.
latimes.com
Yes, being rich doesn’t suck, as they say- if you have the money, you can hire who you wish, but in this “ObamaCare” bill, you wouldn’t get the same chances, or treatments Teddy has been able to obtain, due to his wealth. Instead, we would get waiting times a la Canada, incompetent doctors, (because of the Affirmative Action portions of this bill, which would require the hiring of “diverse” doctors, no matter their incompetence), and a “value” assessed on just what our “cost” to society might be.
What chafes me about Teddy, is the near reverence he has managed to evoke in the halls of Washington, simply because he, 1)- escaped being indicted for manslaughter, 2)- has a truly legendary liver, having consumed at least a distillery in his lifetime, and 3)- hasn’t (as far as we know) contracted a terminal STD (although I understand that syphilis affects the brain). Surely there should be something more to his legacy than the gist of a drinking song, and Teddy hopes that this shoddy healthcare bill is it.
Sorry- but the bill is as flawed as Teddy is- if he hadn’t been so blinded by his political partnerships with the unions, gay community, and every other liberal cause he could grope, perhaps he might have had a real- world reaction to health care reform, but, like every other liberal, he owed these special interest groups, and had to pay them back.
Ted Kennedy’s record on healthcare reform is hardly flawless. Critics believe his refusal to compromise with Presidents Nixon and Carter caused him to miss promising windows of opportunity. During the Reagan years, he bowed to labor unions and declined to back a plan for catastrophic health insurance, a move he later regretted.
latimes.com
Yep, now this healthcare thing has morphed into a blatant power grab by the liberal elites who will opt, because of their money, to seek better care for themselves because they can.
Just like in George Orwell’s book, Animal Farm, some animals are more equal than others.
And the Rich are the most equal of all.
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