TED KENNEDY AND HEALTH CARE
Posted on 31 August 2009
I’ve gotten my wires crossed around the passing of Ted Kennedy and health care, and the dialogue between the parties and in the media hasn’t helped me any. I’m going to try to unbundle my thinking here, if I can.
The first question I have to ask myself is do I really want to be healthy or would I rather just argue and have that delicious feeling of victimization. I mean why haven’t I gone really ballistic about wanting what my leaders (mostly guys, mostly white) have in D.C. – single payer health care provided to Congress, the White House, the judicial system, the state houses, the governors – all the leaders.
Take Ted Kennedy, for example, as he struggled with cancer. He had single payer health care provided for by the government, while many (maybe a majority of) Americans have appeared to be angry at the prospect of their having it too, or of having it delivered to their elderly loved ones, suffering in much the same way as Kennedy. Do we feel that we don’t deserve it? Are we giving it to our leaders (after all we’re paying for it with our tax dollars) with some deep hope that in their gratitude they’ll maybe treat us a little bit better? If so, then why doesn’t it follow that we would want what they have?
Maybe it’s because, for instance with Ted Kennedy, we feel inferior to them. I have to admit I felt more than a bit inferior hearing about all the friends he had, all the papers and books he wrote, all the bills he passed and then, of course, the fact that he was a Kennedy, his hair ruffled by the winds of Hyannis. In some deep sense, I have to admit it
– I just don’t feel quite as good as him.
But then I can’t help circling Mary Jo Kopechne’s death, how he abandoned her, how he panicked as the car sank and then tried to lie, how the forces around him (who had seen their chance of once again returning to the White House under another Kennedy) struggled to spin the story, twist the mess that he’d made and keep him running for the Oval Office. It didn’t work, of course, which was perhaps a blessing for Mister Kennedy because he seemed to become a far more serious politician after that, even as he slowly bloated himself — perhaps, from the guilt and pain. Ironically, maybe those events so many years earlier finished him, since he died so shortly after the fortieth anniversary of Mary Jo’s death. In short, despite all the spin, the myth, the money, the power and the glory, poor Ted Kennedy was just another one of us, a human being doing the best he could, like a plumber, or a carpenter or a secretary or Mary Jo’s parents or all of us who are trying to survive, trying to live, blossom and grow as best we can.
Which again brings me back to why doesn’t each and every one of us want (and feel we deserve) what he had: single payer health care? And it’s not socialism or communism if we the people want it. That’s the point of democracy. If enough of us want it, then we can get it and then we should call it Health Care for a Democracy, not socialism or communism or even liberalism, all of which seem more about what the leaders think the people want, not actually what the people do want.
So do I really want equality in my democracy? Do I want to have what my leaders have, or am I just too battered by the corporations and the parade of politicians, experts and shills to know what’s good for me? Am I okay with remaining a victim? Am I okay with believing that my leaders are better than me, am I okay with remaining unhealthy along with my fellow citizens? Because if I am then, as is correct in a democracy, that’s what I’ll get.
2 responses to TED KENNEDY AND HEALTH CARE
First of all, thank you for your correction re Mary Jo Kopechne. It was fixed and hyperlinked for anyone not as familiar as you with the story. Secondly I can’t argue with you re my inabilty to write, nor the fact that I have no copy editor, nor with the fact that I have health care from the Director’s Guild and that I once hobnobbed with various folks in Martha’s Vineyard, Sea Ranch, etc.. And that it’s rather sad where I find myself at almost sixty. And that Kennedy moved through the second part of his life with some real grace and courage. And that I haven’t, really. I am, in short, a kind of loser, really. There are others out there like me, quite a few actually. I happen to have just set up a website and have started to play around with what a mess I am, with the confusion that I find myself in. I think I’m also not alone in that either. You are clearly not in that place and that’s important to talk about too. When someone like you can write clearly and well it’s important that they get your thoughts out there in the world and I’m grateful that you’ve graced this website with those abilities and I hope you continue. But I think there’s a place for those less clear like me, whether they are rich, poor, well educated, have hobnobbed with the rich or with the homeless, are self indulgent or are clear headed, disciplined and upstanding citizens.
And in regards to the Director’s Guild there was an interesting conversation at a board meeting about the fact that our health care plan would be somewhat diminished if almost any government plan went through. Were we, “the rich,” prepared to give up a little so that the less lucky (and I count myself very lucky and probably not that bright as you point out)…that the less lucky get covered too, all of them? The response at the DGA was mixed and a little confused. And yet quite a few of the members were ready to give up some of the coverage they’ve had so that the entire population could be covered because as it was pointed out – sickness spreads, viruses hit everybody, epidemics are equal opportunity players, so the point is that you, me, everyone of us needs to get together on this point (and other points too, I suspect) – the smarter and more responsible ones like you, the more foolish and immature ones like me – we have to get together as best we can because, when all is said and done, we’re in this together whether we like it or not. For the record, I like that we’re all in it together. And a lot of what you’ve said I think is correct and helpful and I hope you keep coming back and giving me hell when you have the energy and interest – and if you don’t care or have the interest, that’s fine too…
Again…if you are a new visitor — this response of mine was to a very negative and quite nasty comment (one person was attacking the site over and over pretending to be different people). This internet world is incredibly interesting in that it demands new ways of handling things. If you go through some of these comments it must be a little confusing, but it captures some of my confusion. Increasingly I am coming to believe that it’s important to share our confusions, particularly as we start out to do something new, make mistakes, lose our way, hopefully find out way back. It’s relatively easy to do the same thing over and over – not much confusion there. But something new? There’s bound to be confusion, more than likely plenty of it…so here it is in various comments. But I believe we’ve weathered this rather interesting storm. For now I think the confusion will diminish…