Fourteen months ago Ted Kennedy was diagnosed with a malignant glioma. This disease is terrible. Half of all people stricken are dead in a year. 75% are dead in two years.
He traveled the country to get the best care possible. He visited icons of American health care for treatments that included surgery, chemo and radiation at some of the nation's greatest institutions.
He had all the power and access money could buy. And still, his disease took him quickly. He lived as would be expected by the statistics. He lived "longer" than his doctors expected him to, but certainly not longer than the statistics would suggest. In the end he consumed the same kind of access he was afforded, an unlimited orgy of FREE=MORE in his final year of life.
38 years prior he championed a universal federal health system.
The irony here is that no federal run insurance system in the world would be able to fund, and sustain on a national level, the kind of FREE=MORE that Senator Kennedy consumed in his final 14 months. As a liberal icon for 4 decades, he pushed for a government insurance that would set prices and socialize the delivery of your health care.
The irony here is that had his plan succeeded almost 40 years ago, there would be no world class neurosurgeons operating at Duke to try and save his life. There would likely be no Temodar or technological advancements in radiation therapy had prices been fixed by a government board that stripped out profit in search of social solidarity. Many advanced therapies, medications and technical innovations are enjoyed throughout the world because of the risk taken by American companies. Without America's willingness to take risk with capital, the world would be worse off than it is today.
The health care technology-medical-industrial complex we currently enjoy, and the one that Senator Kennedy basked in at the end of his life would not exist had his policies been implemented in 1971. He would not have access to life extending surgery, chemo and radiation that may have at most, added several months to his life.
He pushed for a system of care that he would have struggled in his final year of life. One where he would be shunned due to cost. One that would turn him away in favor of spending his million dollar health care needs on vaccinations for children, or beta blockers for heart failure patients. Terminal cancer? Spending a million dollars of federal tax dollars to extend a life 2 months?
The system the Senator Kennedy envisioned was one that could not sustain. Look only to the bankrupt Medicare National Bank, a federal system of only 50 million Americans, and ask yourself how Senator Kennedy could pay for a universal single payer federal health system that offered FREE=MORE to every citizen.
A FREE=MORE that he consumed till the very end. His death is tragic. But let's not forget his policies and every other politician who wishes to force the cost of care on to the American taxpayer (at least only the rich) would not sustain by any economic measurement. What he was offered, what he asked for and what he consumed in health care expenditures in his final 14 months is neither sustainable or rational by any economic measurement on a national level.
