Yesterday evening in his address on health care to the joint session of Congress the President revealed that Senator Edward Kennedy had written him a letter on "the great cause" of his life.
In his address to Congress President Obama embraced many of the ideas contained in the Wyden-Bennett bill, the Dingell bill, and the Kennedy bill, which have been described in the previous postings of this series on health care financing reform. These proposals include:
1. Creation of a government-sponsored market for health insurance ("the Exchange") which will allow individuals and employers access to a statewide or even nationwide choice of private health insurance plans;
2. Regulation of private health insurance sold through the Exchange, in particular requiring coverage for preexisting conditions and preventive care;
3. Changing the tax treatment for private health insurance, at least for "high-end" plans or higher-income workers, and using the increased tax revenues to offer tax credits to lower-income workers to purchase insurance;
4. An individual and employer mandate – every person will have to have health insurance, and every employer will have to offer it or pay a fee that would be used to help the company's workers purchase insurance. There will be exemptions and credits for small employers and hardship cases;
5. A "public option" – not nationalized health care as in Britain, but government health insurance modeled on Medicare. Individuals and employers could purchase health insurance through a government agency essentially at cost. The policies sold under the public option would have to conform to all of the requirements that private insurance policies would be subject to including coverage for preexisting conditions and preventive care.
The emotional high point of the speech was when the President revealed that Senator Edward Kennedy had written him a letter in May whose contents were to be revealed in the event of his death. Here is what the President said about Senator Kennedy, and what he expects from us as we move forward to reform our system of paying for health care:
Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we do nothing. Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are sick and need it the most. And more will die as a result. We know these things to be true.
That is why we cannot fail. Because there are too many Americans counting on us to succeed — the ones who suffer silently, and the ones who shared their stories with us at town halls, in e-mails, and in letters.
I received one of those letters a few days ago. It was from our beloved friend and colleague, Ted Kennedy. He had written it back in May, shortly after he was told that his illness was terminal. He asked that it be delivered upon his death.
In it, he spoke about what a happy time his last months were, thanks to the love and support of family and friends, his wife, Vicki, his amazing children, who are all here tonight. And he expressed confidence that this would be the year that health care reform — "that great unfinished business of our society," he called it — would finally pass. He repeated the truth that health care is decisive for our future prosperity, but he also reminded me that "it concerns more than material things." "What we face," he wrote, "is above all a moral issue; at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country."
I've thought about that phrase quite a bit in recent days — the character of our country. One of the unique and wonderful things about America has always been our self-reliance, our rugged individualism, our fierce defense of freedom and our healthy skepticism of government. And figuring out the appropriate size and role of government has always been a source of rigorous and, yes, sometimes angry debate. That's our history.
For some of Ted Kennedy's critics, his brand of liberalism represented an affront to American liberty. In their minds, his passion for universal health care was nothing more than a passion for big government.
But those of us who knew Teddy and worked with him here — people of both parties — know that what drove him was something more. His friend Orrin Hatch — he knows that. They worked together to provide children with health insurance. His friend John McCain knows that. They worked together on a Patient's Bill of Rights. His friend Chuck Grassley knows that. They worked together to provide health care to children with disabilities.
On issues like these, Ted Kennedy's passion was born not of some rigid ideology, but of his own experience. It was the experience of having two children stricken with cancer. He never forgot the sheer terror and helplessness that any parent feels when a child is badly sick. And he was able to imagine what it must be like for those without insurance, what it would be like to have to say to a wife or a child or an aging parent, there is something that could make you better, but I just can't afford it.
That large-heartedness — that concern and regard for the plight of others — is not a partisan feeling. It's not a Republican or a Democratic feeling. It, too, is part of the American character — our ability to stand in other people's shoes; a recognition that we are all in this together, and when fortune turns against one of us, others are there to lend a helping hand; a belief that in this country, hard work and responsibility should be rewarded by some measure of security and fair play; and an acknowledgment that sometimes government has to step in to help deliver on that promise.
Ted Kennedy's declaration that "What we face is above all a moral issue" recalls the statement of his brother Jack in his address to the nation on Civil Rights on June 11, 1963. President Kennedy said:
We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.
The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated. If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who will represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place? Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?
One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.
At the close of his speech Kennedy revealed that was sending to Congress a proposed law on Civil Rights, legislation that would eventually be enacted as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Jack Kennedy's great civil rights speech can be viewed on youtube here and here, and a high quality audio recording of the speech is available from the JFK Library here.
In my opinion President Obama's speech on health care was magnificent. The Civil Rights bill that JFK announced he was sending to Congress in his speech of June 11, 1963, did not become law until the following year. There was great opposition to the civil rights measure, but ultimately it received bipartisan support and was adopted at least in part out of respect and admiration for JFK. I believe that health care reform will come much faster.
UPDATE: Here is the link to Senator Kennedy's letter on Talking Points Memo.
