Kennedy and Health Care, Then and Now

"BTW-6'1", 175lbs, MA in International Relations, Army retiree (2 Vietnam tours)"

You sound like a real tool. Why don't you scurry back to your inbred backward hillbilly friends. This site is for people who's IQ is greater than their shoe size.

If the findings of CBO over inaction had been released earlier, Ted Kennedy could've seen his lifetime wish come true.

Inaction cost, $9trillion over the next decade, can not be compared to the balance between estimate and outcome in a worst case of scenario, and this balance could be adjusted each year. ((Some of CBO analysis : While the costs of the financial bailouts and economic stimulus bills are staggering, they are only a fraction of the coming costs from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that each year Medicaid will expand by 7 percent, Medicare by 6 percent, and Social Security by 5 percent. These programs face a 75-year shortfall of $43 trillion--60 times greater than the gross cost of the $700 billion TARP financial bailout)). Time does not fix endless greed and energy depletion.

When the public health is also one of commodity like a house, we come to a tragic and unthinkable conclusion : As to for-profit business, the more and longer ills patients get, the more profits they make, and it will debilitate the overall economy involving education for the future, not to mention continued bankruptcy of middle class.

Of young adults ages 19 to 29, 13.2 million, or 29 percent, lacked coverage in 2007, and that implies the total of this promising reform will be cheaper than expected, I guess.

In case of an unexpected injury or ill, they might give up their learning or aspiration, in this regard, this reform means liberty, job opportunity, competitiveness for them and future.

The contents of savings (below) in this reform 'have nothing to do with' limit to medical access, rationing, tax raise, and deficit etc.

Rather, without wiping out these wastes and roots of bankruptcy for middle class, all fronts are sure to face larger financial ruin than this recession, which leads to more limit to medical access, more rationing, more tax raise, and more deficit etc than today.

$1.042trillion (cost of reform) + $245bn (cost to reflect annual pay raise of docs) = $1.287bn (actual cost of reform).

$583bn (the revenue package) + $80bn (so-called doughnut hole) + $155bn (savings from hospitals) + $167bn (ending the unnecessary subsidies for insurers) + 129bn(mandate-related fine based on shared responsibility) + $277bn (ending medical fraud, a minimum of 3% , the combined Medicare and Medicaid cost of $923.5bn per year, as of July,) = $1.391trillion + the reduced cost of ER visits (Medicare covers some 40% of the total) + the tax code on the wealthiest more reduced than originally proposed = why not ? (except for a magic pill, an outcome-based payment reform & IT effects and so forth).

As lawmakers debate how to pay for an overhaul of the nation's health care system, a new report from The Commonwealth Fund claims that including both private and public insurance choices in a new insurance exchange would save the United States as much as $265 billion in administrative costs from 2010 to 2020.

"Health reform can help pay for itself, but both private and public insurance choices are critically important," said Commonwealth Fund President Karen Davis, who coauthored the new report. "A public insurance plan can help drive new efficiencies in the system that will produce large cost reductions. Without a public plan, much of those potential savings will be lost."

Unlike high fuel price and mortgage rate in recent years as the roots of great recession and bankruptcy of middle class, the severity in the high cost of health premiums has come to light lately. Similarly, in an attempt to hide these deficit-driven corruptions and wastes, the greed allies struggle to turn the savings via removing these wastes into limit to medical access, rationing, tax raise, and deficit etc.

In contrast, not to mention a wide range of consumer protection, options across state lines, this promising reform takes initiatives in more primary care docs and improved long-term care. Unnecessarily, hope should not be replaced with all forms of malign lies, fear, just like people don't have to fear quitting drug.

"I don't believe in abortion on demand. The day we can solve the world's population problem, the problem of browns in Central America, the problems of blacks in the ghetto, by aborting them, that's unacceptable to me. How about the kids in mental hospitals? They're parasites on the environment. How about the old people in the institutions? They're cluttering up the landscape. Do you want to exterminate them, too?"

---Senator Ted Kennedy, 1970 Campaign for Senate

(taken from Kristen Day's book, Pro-Life Democrats.)

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Ted Kennedy, the iconic Massachusetts senator, died late Tuesday night at home in Hyannis Port after a long battle with cancer. Elected first in 1962, the 77-year-old liberal lion reminds many political observers of the changes on abortion among many members of the Democratic Party.

To anyone who follows abortion politics today, Kennedy is not only a reliable pro-abortion vote, but a forceful advocate of abortion.

He repeatedly has voted against all attempts to stop taxpayer financing of abortions and opposed the ban on partial-birth abortions. Kennedy regularly receives 0 percent records from the National Right to Life Committee.

Although his health prevented him from casting any votes on pro-life issues this session of Congress, Kennedy received a 14 percent rating from 2007-2008 from NRLC, agreeing with the pro-life group only on allowing states to provide health insurance coverage for unborn children in their SCHIP programs.

Kennedy's abortion advocacy was so pervasive prior to his death that the Senate government-run health care bill that bears his name specifically allows abortion funding and mandates that Planned Parenthood abortion centers be included.

But Kennedy's position wasn't always in line with abortion advocacy groups.

He is one of many formerly pro-life Democrats who changed with the political winds as the party moved from one influenced by pro-life southern Democrats and pro-life Catholics to one dominated by the pro-abortion feminist groups like NARAL and Emily's List.

Kennedy displayed an eloquent pro-life position in 1971, prior to Roe v. Wade, when he wrote a letter to Catholic League member Tom Dennelly.

“While the deep concern of a woman bearing an unwanted child merits consideration and sympathy, it is my personal feeling that the legalization of abortion on demand is not in accordance with the value which our civilization places on human life. Wanted or unwanted, I believe that human life, even at its earliest stages, has certain rights which must be recognized—the right to be born, the right to love, the right to grow old," he wrote.

“On the question of the individual’s freedom of choice there are easily available birth control methods and information which women may employ to prevent or postpone pregnancy. But once life has begun, no matter at what stage of growth, it is my belief that termination should not be decided merely by desire," he added.

“When history looks back to this era it should recognize this generation as one which cared about human beings enough to halt the practice of war, to provide a decent living for every family, and to fulfill its responsibility to its children from the very moment of conception," he concluded.

In 2005, Catholic League president William Donohue talked about Kennedy's transformation on abortion.

"Sadly for him, history will look back at this era and recognize that he didn't care enough about human beings to take responsibility for children from the very moment of conception," he said.

Kennedy's legacy could be one celebrated by the majority of Americans who take a pro-life view on abortion. But, like other pro-life Democrats who lost their way over the years, he will be remembered as a turncoat who put politics over principle.

Other prominent pro-life Democrats who eventually abandoned the courage of their convictions include former president Bill Clinton, current Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, and "common ground" congressman Tim Ryan.

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