26
Aug
2009
The Lion & the Resurrection
Everyone’s saying the health reform bill is now resurrected because Senator Edward Kennedy, the career-long proponent of universal health care, has died. But it was crazy to think the bill was dead – no matter how many irate constitutionalists showed up at town hall meetings. Everyone should have seen this coming.
It’s been a given for months now that the liberal lion of the Senate was dying of brain cancer, and that he’s always wanted to pass universal health care. Beltway regulars know that a lawmaker’s reputation is sterling once s/he dies and the inclination is to grant the legislator’s last wish. In short, it was to be expected that the death of Ted Kennedy would increase the probability of passing a health care bill – no matter how flawed.
The true challenge now is to resist that inclination for the sake of the nation.
Covering more (if not all) of the nation’s uninsured citizens must start with fixing the problems with efficiency and fraud that exist in Medicare and Medicaid. It simply defies all logic to entertain creation of a new system of any kind, without fixing the flaws in the one the country’s had for 40 years.