Illegal Immigrants Difficult To Remove From ObamaCare

Source: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=337474713517269

By SEAN HIGGINS
News Analysis by IBD | Posted Thursday, September 10, 2009

It was the heckle heard round the world. During President Obama's Wednesday speech, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., shouted "You lie!" when Obama said his health plan wouldn't cover illegal aliens.

Democrats — and many Republicans — cried foul at the breach of decorum. Wilson apologized for his "inappropriate and regrettable" outburst. Obama said Thursday he accepted the apology.

But was Wilson inaccurate? Some independent analysis indicates — contrary to Obama's claim — that the House health bill could result in coverage being extended to illegal immigrants.

The Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan agency that analyzes legislation for lawmakers, notes that most of the language in the main House bill does not include illegals — but has few mechanisms for enforcing this.

The bill's individual mandate to get coverage does include illegals.

"Wilson was inappropriate and rude, but he does have a point," said Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors immigration restriction.

As an Aug. 25 CRS report notes, the bill's individual mandate to get health coverage extends to "unauthorized aliens" who have a "substantial presence" in the U.S. That means they have lived here for at least 31 days in the current year and 183 days in the past two years.

Trust, Don't Verify

Another provision would create health exchanges for people to buy public or private insurance. The CRS notes that the bill "does not contain any restrictions on noncitizens — whether legally or illegally present," from participating.

The bill would also provide subsidies to buy health coverage, but not for "individuals who are not lawfully in the United States."

Yet the CRS notes the bill has no verification mechanism. It leaves that up to a newly created "Health Choices Commissioner."

During Ways and Means hearings, Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev., sought to amend the House bill to require screening illegals via the Income and Eligibility Verification System and the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements.

Heller's amendment was voted down along party lines. A committee spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

"The congressman believes the House bill does not restrict illegal aliens from accessing the services in the bill," said Stewart Bybee, Heller's spokesman.

No Health Patrol?

CIS's Camarota agrees, saying the bill's language gives little reason to believe it would screen out illegal immigrants.

"It is kind of like putting up a speed limit sign on a highway and then the police saying we'll never patrol that highway," he said.

The CIS estimates that the House bill would cover 6.6 million uninsured illegal immigrants.

Pro-immigration groups dispute such contentions.

Sonal Ambegaokar, health policy attorney with the National Immigration Law Center, says that claims the bill would extend to illegal immigrants are simply false. Most low income people would come in via Medicaid, she said. "And they have done an effective job in verifying eligibility."

She expects that system to be extended to the insurance exchange in the final language.

Camarota responded that about half of illegals earn too much to qualify for Medicaid. He also argued that expanding Medicaid will erode its enforcement powers.

If ObamaCare truly bars illegals, they would likely use emergency rooms, which has been cited as a reason for national health care.

It's unclear how the Senate will address illegals. Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., has proposed an outline, but the Senate has no single health bill now.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted that Baucus' plan would require companies to pay for subsidies to buy coverage for employees from low-income families. This could deter firms from hiring the poor, freezing out many immigrant families.

Engagement: CHERRIN-RUBIN

Source: http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19550/

September 10, 2009

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Mrs. Grace Cherrin of Wilmington, Del., announces the engagement of her daughter, Lynn Hannah Cherrin, to Scott Michael Rubin, son of Neil and Faye Rubin of Marlton, N.J.

Ms. Cherrin, the daughter of the late Gary Cherrin, graduated from the University of Delaware with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. She also holds a Master of Science degree from Drexel University.

Mr. Rubin graduated from Rutgers University-New Brunswick with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science and a Master of Public Administration degree from Rutgers University-Camden.

The couple, who lives in Bucks County, is planning a May wedding.

Engagement: CHERRIN-RUBIN

Source: http://www.jewishvoicesnj.org/news/2009/0909/life_cycles/052.html

Grace Cherrin of Wilmington, DE announces the engagement of her daughter, Lynn Hannah Cherrin, to Scott Michael Rubin, son of Neil and Faye Rubin of Marlton.

Lynn Hannah Cherrin, also the daughter of the late Gary Cherrin, graduated from the Univ. of Delaware with a B.A. degree in English and received a Master of Science degree from Drexel Univ.

Scott Michael Rubin graduated from Rutgers Univ. in New Brunswick with a B.A. degree in Political Science and received a Master of Public Administration from Rutgers Univ. in Camden.

The couple lives in Bucks County, PA and is planning a May 2010 wedding.

Cut Costs Without Rationing Care By Putting Patient Back In Charge

Source: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=336612905232611

By TEVI D. TROY AND JEFFREY H. ANDERSON | Posted Monday, August 31, 2009 4:30 PM PT

Decades of data confirm a simple truth:  If we want to lower health costs, we need to put consumers back in charge.

Many people now feel like second-class citizens when they enter the doctor's office. That's because everyone in the office knows that the patient isn't really the payer — that the patient doesn't hold the purse strings.

The greater the percentage of medical costs that patients pay to their insurance company in premiums, the more insurers are in charge.

The greater the percentage that patients instead pay directly to their doctor out-of-pocket, the more patients are in charge.

Whether it's televisions, computers or Lasik eye surgery, when consumers are in charge, prices stay in check.  In 1970, consumers paid for 62% of all privately purchased health care out-of-pocket. Today that percentage is just 26%. 

Meanwhile, per-patient health costs have nearly quadrupled — even after accounting for inflation.

Consumers are paying less directly to doctors, but they're paying four times as much overall — to insurers or the IRS.

Where consumers have had the least control, costs have risen the most. As a study by one of the authors (Anderson) for the Pacific Research Institute study has shown, since 1970 the per-patient costs of Medicare and Medicaid have each risen one-third more than the combined per-patient costs of all other health care in America — the vast majority of which is purchased privately. And that's even without the Medicare prescription drug benefit. 

Yet President Obama and most congressional Democrats insist that a dramatic expansion of government-run health care is necessary to cut costs. 

Only two basic ways exist to cut costs:  putting consumers in charge and letting them pursue value; putting the government in charge and letting it ration care.

So, how do we put consumers back in charge? First, we need to reject the current bills in Congress, which would restrict consumer choice substantially. Then we need to empower consumers in three key ways:

1. End the unfair tax on the uninsured. We should give tax credits to individuals and families who are uninsured or self-insured, thereby putting them on the same ground as those with employer-sponsored insurance. 

This would reduce the number of people who are uninsured, increase fairness and inject needed life into the insurance marketplace. Those with self-purchased insurance shouldn't have to pay higher taxes than those covered by their employer. 

2. Make it easier for consumers to see prices. When then-Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt was in China a couple of years ago, he posed for a picture in front of a giant fast-food-style menu board.

Instead of cheeseburgers and fries, the board listed medical services and prices. If Chinese consumers can see prices and respond accordingly, American consumers should certainly have the same freedom.

3. Encourage consumer-driven insurance models to give consumers skin in the game. Intel offers a plan in which it pays all insurance premiums, while its employees pay all health costs up to an annual deductible of about $2,500 for families — with certain preventive care provided for free. 

Intel employees deposit part of their income into a health savings account tax-free, just like any income that's used to pay for insurance premiums is tax-free.

These consumers have a stronger incentive to shop for value — as everything they spend up to $2,500 comes from their own pockets, and everything they save is theirs to keep. Whole Foods offers a comparable plan.

Similarly, Safeway has an employee-incentive program rewarding healthier lifestyles. If you exercise, watch what you eat and don't smoke, you get charged lower premiums. This has cut costs by almost 40%, and 76% of Safeway's employees are asking for more cost-cutting financial incentives. 

Unfortunately, the federal government currently limits the use of such incentives.

Even more unfortunately, the bills being debated in Congress would greatly undermine consumer-driven plans by capping by law the percentage of payments that patients could make directly to their doctor — thereby entrenching insurers' control and denying consumer control. 

Furthermore, the Senate bill would make it illegal to charge lower premiums to those who stay in better shape. Instead of making the tax code fairer, prices more transparent and consumers freer to shop for value, the Democratic bills offer a combination of mandates and restrictions, subsidies to families making up to $88,000 a year, and government-run care.

Yes, some can't afford insurance or suffer from prohibitively expensive pre-existing conditions, and they should receive needed financial assistance.

But the core of our system should be built around common sense, market-based principles, not the government-centric ones espoused by the president and the Democratic Congress.

Any system that cannot control costs won't have much left over for the needy.

Across nearly 40 years, the costs of government-run medical care have risen far more, per patient, than the costs of privately purchased care. As consumers' opportunities and incentives to pursue value have diminished, costs have skyrocketed. 

Even President Obama has talked about the hidden costs of unnecessary care: "You may not see it because if you have health insurance right now (the money is) just being sent to the insurance company."

His solution is to redirect that money to the federal government.  This would cement a still more cumbersome middleman in place, consolidate power in Washington and reduce consumer freedom — while increasing taxes, deficits and costs. 

The only proven pursuer of value in American medical care is the American consumer. By basing policy on this principle, we can bring our costs under control while maintaining — and improving — our high quality of care.  If consumers are encouraged to control their own resources and shop for value, they'll find a way to do what they've done in nearly every other economic sector: pay less for higher quality.

Experience has shown us what works. The only way to cut costs without rationing care is to put the American consumer in the driver's seat — and to put Washington in the rearview mirror. 

Troy is a visiting senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and was the deputy secretary of health and human services from 2007-09.

Anderson is a senior fellow in health care studies at the Pacific Research Institute.

Diversity Czar Threatens Free Speech

Source: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=336613763986105

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, August 31, 2009 4:30 PM PT

1st Amendment: Mark Lloyd, a disciple of Saul Alinsky and fan of Hugo Chavez, wants to destroy talk radio and says free speech is a distraction. The new FCC diversity "czar" says Venezuela is an example we should follow.

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When Mark Lloyd was appointed July 29 as the chief diversity officer at the Federal Communications Commission, a nation focused on ObamaCare and a deteriorating economy took little notice. But as angry constituents flood town hall meetings and call in to talk radio, a man dedicated to silencing them sits at the right hand of the president.

They share a common hero — Saul Alinsky — who wrote the community organizer's bible, "Rules for Radicals." It speaks of confrontation or, as candidate Obama put it, of "getting in their faces" as a way to obtain power, not from the people or for the people, but over the people.

Lloyd has written that we make too much of the constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of speech and the press — for "the purpose of free speech is warped to protect global corporations and block rules that would promote democratic governance."

We thought we were democratically governed. We thought we could vote as we choose after a vigorous and open debate. Once the major networks served as information gatekeepers controlling what we saw and heard. Now talk radio, the Internet and cable news have enhanced democracy by promoting the free flow of information and discourse. Lloyd wants to stop all that.

Fox News host Glenn Beck has done yeoman work in exposing this threat posed by Mr. Lloyd. He points out that in his 2006 book, "Prologue to a Farce: Communication and Democracy in America," Lloyd wrote: "It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press. . . . This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. . . . At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies."

Lloyd wants to restore local and national caps on the ownership of commercial radio stations and ensure greater local accountability over radio licensing. The kicker is he would also require owners who refuse to give up profitable air time in the name of "localism" to pay a fee to support public broadcasting.

He proposes using the existing FCC "localism" requirement, which can mean anything from running more public service announcements to putting Janeane Garofalo on after Rush Limbaugh. Local community organizers would be encouraged to harass conservative stations by filing complaints with the FCC.

He essentially proposes extorting money from broadcasters who have the audacity to air the likes of Beck, Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham, all of whom have competed in the marketplace of ideas and won in the ratings, and use it to fund those outfits nobody wants to listen to — like NPR and Air America.

As Lloyd writes, the "part of our proposal that gets the dittoheads (Rush Limbaugh fans) upset is our suggestion that the commercial radio station owners either play by the rules or pay." Or worse.

The FCC could then say they had enough justification to revoke a station's license if they didn't comply or pay a fee. In true Alinsky style, shut them up by shutting them down.

Lloyd praises Hugo Chavez's "incredible revolution" in Venezuela and the way "Chavez began to take very seriously the media in his country" by imposing restraints on cable TV and revoking the licenses of more than 200 radio stations" that insufficiently toed the Chavez party line.

Lloyd long ago declared war on unbridled talk radio and cable news. He wrote that "our work was not simply convincing policy makers of the logic and morality of our arguments. We understood that we were in a struggle for power against an opponent, the commercial broadcasters."

When Mark Lloyd talks about diversity, it is not diversity of opinion. As in the '60s sci-fi series, "Outer Limits," his advice is to "sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear."

Tragic Tales From The NHS

Source: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=336265198215586

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, August 27, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Health Care Reform: A study by the British Patients Association tells the true story about socialized medicine in Britain. It's one of willful and woeful neglect of millions, missed diagnoses, and elderly patients left in pain.

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IBD Exclusive Series: Government-Run Healthcare: A Prescription For Failure

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While reading this disturbing analysis of the pitiful state of medical care in Britain in the Daily Telegraph, the Vincent Price horror classic "The Abominable Dr. Phibes" came to mind. Price portrayed a man who used bizarre methods to dispatch his victims.

The abominable British National Health Service, based on this report, is only slightly better.

The Patients Association's primary focus was the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Health Trust, where it was found that up to 1,200 people died through failings in urgent care the past six years. Their analysis was prompted by an avalanche of complaints of shameful care at the hands of the NHS.

Claire Rayner, president of the group and a former nurse, said: "For far too long now, the Patients Association has been receiving calls on our help line from people wanting to talk about the dreadful, neglectful, demeaning, painful and sometimes downright cruel treatment their elderly relatives had experienced at the hands of NHS nurses."

There was the case of 82-year-old piano teacher Pamela Goddard. She was suffering from cancer and was left to suffer in her excrement as her condition deteriorated due to bed sores.

Before Florence Weston died at age 85, she remained without food or water as her scheduled hip replacement operation was repeatedly canceled.

Katherine Murphy, director of the Patients Association, said: "If this was extrapolated to the whole of the NHS from 2002 to 2008 it would equate to over 1 million patients. Very often these are the most vulnerable elderly and terminally ill patients. It is a sad indictment of the care they receive."

Daniel Bates at England's Daily Mail newspaper reported on one of our favorite examples of the glories of socialized medicine. He wrote about Mark Wattson, who after weeks of excruciating pain was happy to get his appendix removed — or so he thought. Doctors told him the operation was a success and sent him home.

Bates wrote: "Only a month later the 35-year-old collapsed in agony and had to be taken back to Great Western Hospital in Swindon by ambulance. To his shock, surgeons from the same team told him that not only was his appendix still inside him, but it had ruptured — a potentially fatal complication." Oops.

Under the NHS system, according to an analysis by the Rare Cancers Forum printed in the Daily Telegraph, about 1,000 victims of rare forms of cancer were denied drug treatment the past three years. Reason? NHS bureaucrats had not licensed them for their particular form of cancer.

Stella Pendleton, executive director of the charity, said: "The NHS is forcing desperate patients into the cruel situation where the chances of their being given the treatment they need depend on where they live. No patient should be denied a treatment recommended by a doctor simply because the cancer it treats is too rare for the medicine to be licensed."

The Daily Mail reports that thousands of British women are forced to give birth outside maternity wards due to a shortage of midwives and hospital beds. Some 4,000 women last year, up 15% from the year before, were forced to give birth in places ranging from elevators to toilets, putting the lives of mothers and babies at risk.

Meanwhile, it has been reported that up to one-third of health care trusts in Britain are importing doctors from as far away as Poland, Lithuania, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Switzerland because of a shortage of doctors willing to work in the evenings and on weekends.

An increasing number of British patients are being treated by exhausted foreign doctors with a poor command of English. Alarms went off after a German doctor brought in with just three hours of sleep had two patients die on his first shift in Britain.

Nigerian-born Dr. Daniel Ubani had just three hours' sleep after traveling from Germany to a shift in Cambridgeshire. He injected 70-year-old kidney patient David Gray with 10 times the recommended dose of morphine, and an 86-year-old woman died of a heart attack after Dr. Ubani failed to send her to a hospital.

Three days after Health Secretary Andrew Burnham falsely claimed on the BBC, "We have no waiting lists now in the NHS, and people have full choice of NHS hospitals," it was revealed that the government's own figures show that 236,316 people are waiting more than 18 weeks for a range of treatments, including oral surgery, rheumatology and basic geriatric medicine.

It's no surprise then to discover that while breast cancer in America has a 25% mortality rate, in Britain it's almost double at 46%. Prostate cancer is fatal to 19% of American men who get it. In Britain it kills 57% of those it strikes. We are not making this up.

These are not cherry-picked stories, but rather daily life under the NHS. In the U.S., trial lawyers would have a field day as demands mounted for such deaths to stop until the system was overhauled.

As we said a week ago, this is what inevitably happens under all forms of socialized medicine.

No wonder that Daniel Hannan, a member of the European Parliament from Britain, has called the NHS a "60-year mistake" and encouraged "Americans to ponder our example and tremble."

When asked about ObamaCare on Fox News, Hannan said: "I find it incredible that a free people living in a country dedicated and founded in the cause of independence and freedom can seriously be thinking about adopting such a system."

And President Obama says it is our system that's unsustainable. We have seen the future of health care, and it doesn't work.

Vive Le French Care?

Source: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=336178343967257

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, August 26, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Health Systems: Health care in France is often held up as a model the U.S. might follow. Yet the French have their own problems that show there's no such thing as a free lunch — or a free doctor's visit.

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IBD Exclusive Series: Government-Run Healthcare: A Prescription For Failure

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Call it the grass-is-greener syndrome. Advocates of national health care, acknowledging the flaws in ObamaCare yet despising the current U.S. system that has the best medicines, the best medical equipment and the shortest waiting lists, have turned their eyes lovingly to places like France.

As City Journal contributing editor Guy Sorman notes, the French would also love to have the low-cost, high-service system some Americans gush about. Unfortunately, they don't. France's system isn't that cheap and is financed by high taxes on labor that have heavy economic consequences.

Sorman notes that a Frenchman making a monthly salary of 3,000 euros has 350 of them deducted for health insurance. Then the employer throws in an additional 1,200 euros. This raises the cost of labor to prohibitive levels and puts a brake on economic growth. This helps explain why French unemployment hovers around 10%.

France imposes an additional tax levy to cover the constant deficits that national health insurance runs.

The French Parliament raises this levy, which applies to all forms of income, every year. Altogether, Sorman writes, "25% of French national income goes toward what's called Social Security, which includes health care and basic retirement pensions for all."

Drugs developed in America at enormous expense do cost less in France, which decides what drugs are to be used and at what prices. American patients in effect subsidize the French, who take the same pills at half the price because American pharmaceutical companies don't want to lose the French market.

French taxpayers fund a state health insurer, Assurance Maladie. Assurance Maladie has run in the red since 1989, and this year's shortfall is expected to be 9.4 billion euros ($13.5 billion) and 15 billion euros in 2010, about 10% of its budget.

Regardless of the cost, does the French system produce better outcomes? Not always. Infant mortality rates are often cited as a reason socialized medicine and single-payer systems are better than what we have here. But according to Dr. Linda Halderman, a policy adviser in the California State Senate, these comparisons are bogus.

Official World Health Organization statistics show the U.S. lagging behind France in infant mortality rates — 6.7 per 1,000 live births vs. 3.8 for France. Halderman notes that in the U.S., any infant born that shows any sign of life for any length of time is considered a live birth. In France — in fact, in most of the European Union — any baby born before 26 weeks' gestation is not considered alive and therefore doesn't "count" in reported infant mortality rates.

France reimburses its doctors at a far lower rate than U.S. physicians would accept.

As David Gratzer, a physician and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, wrote in the summer 2007 issue of City Journal: "In France, the supply of doctors is so limited that during an August 2003 heat wave — when many doctors were on vacation and hospitals were stretched beyond capacity — 15,000 elderly citizens died."

After the tragedy, the French parliament released a harshly worded report blaming the deaths on a complex health system, widespread failure among agencies and health services to coordinate efforts, and chronically insufficient care for the elderly.

It's hard to imagine that happening here, where hospitals have enough air-conditioned beds and doctors that aren't on vacation.

Fact is, most Americans like their health care. There are ways to provide expanded coverage at lower cost, such as pushing individually owned health savings accounts, malpractice reform and allowing insurance to be bought across state lines.

We needn't be forced to sacrifice quality for cost. Nor do we need to look to the French for a better solution. They don't have one.

Edward Kennedy dies at 77; 'liberal lion of the Senate' By Rich Simon and Claudia Luther

The Massachusetts Democrat was the last surviving son in a legendary political family. He was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2008.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight
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Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-ted-kennedy26-2009aug26,0,3398872,full.story

August 26, 2009

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat and icon of American liberal politics who was the last surviving brother of a legendary political family, died late Tuesday at his home in Hyannis Port, Mass., his family announced. He was 77.

Kennedy had been in declining health since having a seizure in May 2008. Subsequent tests determined that he had a malignant brain tumor.

Kennedy had not been to the Capitol since April, missing the passage in June of his groundbreaking measure to regulate tobacco. In July, he could not participate in the drafting of healthcare legislation in his role as chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

He did not attend the funeral for his sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who died Aug. 11, or a White House ceremony during which he was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

"We've lost the irreplaceable center of our family and joyous light in our lives, but the inspiration of his faith, optimism, and perseverance will live on in our hearts forever," his family said in a statement.

A popular figure on both sides of the aisle in the Senate, Kennedy electrified his colleagues in July 2008 when he appeared briefly to vote on a measure to stave off a cut in Medicare fees to doctors who treat seniors, military personnel and their families and others. The measure passed on a 69-30 vote.

Kennedy was greeted with a wild reception from the party faithful in August 2008 on the first night of the Democratic National Convention in Denver. He addressed the gathering in a strong, steady voice, predicting that "this November, the torch will be passed to a new generation of Americans," a reference to Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, who was elected president three months later. Kennedy's endorsement of Obama in January 2008 was credited as an important validation of the senator's bid to win the nomination against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

"The Kennedy family and the Senate family have together lost our patriarch," Harry Reid, the Senate's Democratic leader, said in a statement.

Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House, also expressed her sorrow in a statement. "Senator Kennedy had a grand vision for America, and an unparalleled ability to effect change," she said.

As the standard-bearer for the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, the square-jawed "Ted" or "Teddy" Kennedy believed in government's ability to help solve people's problems, and over the decades he learned how to wield power in the Senate to move the government in that direction. He found numerous ways to work with Republican administrations and senators to fashion significant legislation on issues he cared deeply about.

Kennedy became a national figure after his brothers, President John F. Kennedy and presidential hopeful Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, were assassinated in the 1960s. Many Americans still yearned for a Kennedy who could occupy the White House, and they looked to the youngest of the Kennedy brothers to fulfill those hopes.

But his public image and political fortunes suffered an indelible stain on July 18, 1969, when he drove his Oldsmobile off a bridge into the water on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts. He survived without serious injury, but his female passenger, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, died. In a lapse of judgment that was never fully explained, Kennedy sought the help of friends and advisors and delayed reporting the accident to police for 10 hours.

Nothing he did afterward could wipe out the public memory of that lapse. Though he filled his life with decades of work for progressive causes, and though he became the beloved patriarch of his large and often troubled family, his behavior following the incident at Chappaquiddick still held the power to stun.

Partly because of lingering questions about his actions and his relationship with Kopechne, Kennedy did not run for president in 1972 and 1976. In 1980, apparently believing that enough time had passed, he launched a fierce primary challenge against unpopular President Jimmy Carter that roiled the Democratic Party. Republican Ronald Reagan defeated Carter handily in the general election.

After that last foray into presidential politics, Kennedy concentrated his efforts on the Senate, becoming one of that body's most effective members.

Though his most cherished legislative goal of universal health insurance eluded him, Kennedy helped write a number of laws that ranged from making it easier for workers who change or lose jobs to keep their health insurance, to giving 18-year-olds the right to vote, to deregulating the airlines, helping lower airfares.

He several times spearheaded legislation to raise the minimum wage and, in the early 1970s, wrote the law creating Meals on Wheels, which delivers meals to seniors. He was influential in reforming immigration laws and in expanding Head Start programs.

In 1982, he helped gain an extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and he was a principal sponsor of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which negated Supreme Court decisions that made it more difficult for minorities to win lawsuits charging job discrimination by employers. In 1990, he worked with then-Sen. Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.) to gain passage of the landmark Americans With Disabilities Act giving disabled Americans greater access to employment, among other things. That same year, he was author of the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act providing funds for community healthcare and support services.

And every major education law passed since the 1960s bears Kennedy's imprint, according to the National Education Assn., which gave Kennedy its highest award in 2000.

"Americans have so much affection for the Kennedy family, and they often fail to see past the legend and the celebrity," the group's then-president, Bob Chase, said at the time.

Through sheer energy and willingness to focus, Kennedy could challenge presidents and galvanize legislators of both parties around a given issue.

Following in the footsteps of his brother Robert, he was an early opponent of U.S. participation in the Vietnam War in the 1960s. In the 1970s, he criticized Carter's energy policy. In 1987, he was central to the defeat of Reagan's nomination of conservative Robert H. Bork to the Supreme Court, delivering a powerful denunciation of the president's choice on the Senate floor. He also fought Reagan over cuts to social programs and, in 1989, Kennedy denounced President George H.W. Bush's incursion into Panama to oust strongman Manuel Noriega.

In 1993, Kennedy worked with newly elected President Bill Clinton to gain passage of a bill to allow employees to take time off from their jobs to care for a newborn child or deal with a family illness. And in 2001, he teamed with newly elected President George W. Bush to gain passage of the No Child Left Behind legislation to strengthen educational standards through increased testing and other federal incentives to local school districts.

No matter if the Democrats were in the majority or the minority, Kennedy remained activist and outspoken, sometimes berating the GOP for not addressing social issues.

Once asked what his best quality was as a legislator, he answered: "Persistence."

"He deserves recognition not just as the leading senator of his time, but as one of the greats in [the Senate's] history," New York Times reporter Adam Clymer wrote in his 1999 biography of Kennedy.

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, the conservative Utah Republican who once described some of Kennedy's legislation as "socialism in embryo," said on the occasion of Kennedy's 70th birthday celebration in 2002 that one of the reasons he had originally run for office was to get Kennedy out of office.

"As the past 26 years have amply indicated, I have failed, and I have come to appreciate that the country is better for it," said Hatch, who over the years found common ground with Kennedy on education and health issues and even co-sponsored a bill to allow the creation of cloned embryos to provide stem cells under strict federal oversight.

Edward Moore Kennedy was born Feb. 22, 1932, in Brookline, Mass., to great wealth and even greater expectations. The youngest of nine children, he was the son of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., a self-made millionaire who descended from Irish immigrants and rose to become the U.S. ambassador to Britain. Ted's mother, Rose, was the daughter of John F. "Honey" Fitzgerald, a former Boston mayor.

Though Kennedy's life was privileged, it was filled with tragedy almost from the beginning. When he was 12, his brother Joe Jr., a Navy pilot, was shot down over England during World War II. When he was 16, one of his sisters, Kathleen, died in a plane crash. Earlier, when he was 9, his mentally retarded sister Rosemary was sent to an institution; she died in 2005.

Kennedy went to Harvard University but as a freshman was expelled after having a friend take a Spanish exam for him.

This early indication of "blurred judgment," Kennedy biographer Max Lerner wrote in 1980, set a pattern of "confusion, blunder, remorse, expiation, rebuilding, that was to be repeated on a larger canvas." Significantly, Kennedy's father was able to suppress the story from the newspapers until Ted ran for the Senate 11 years later.

After being expelled from Harvard, Kennedy enlisted in the Army, rising to private first class and winning an honorable discharge in 1953. He was accepted back at Harvard and graduated in 1956. He graduated from law school at the University of Virginia three years later.

Kennedy plunged into politics almost immediately, serving as campaign director for the Rocky Mountain states in John Kennedy's 1960 drive for the presidency.

He then took a job as assistant district attorney in Suffolk County, Mass., and, in 1962, he ran against a prominent Democrat, state Atty. Gen. Edward McCormack, for the unexpired Senate term vacated when JFK won the presidency.

The campaign gave the younger Kennedy his first brush with political hardball: McCormack, a veteran politician and nephew of House Speaker John W. McCormack, portrayed his challenger as a lightweight who was trading on his family name.

"If your name was [merely] Edward Moore [instead of Edward Moore Kennedy], your candidacy would be a joke," McCormack told him during a debate.

But Kennedy's name was Kennedy, and he won the primary. He went on to beat Republican George Cabot Lodge, the son of former Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.

Kennedy arrived in the chamber at age 30, the minimum age required for a senator.

With one brother in the White House and another, Robert, as U.S. attorney general, it was not out of the realm of possibility at the time that there could be a run of three successive Presidents Kennedy.

Then came Nov. 22, 1963.

Kennedy was in Washington when he received word that the president had been shot to death in Dallas. It was the beginning of another string of tragedies for the family.

On June 19, 1964, a private plane flying Kennedy from Washington to Springfield, Mass., crashed, killing an aide and the pilot. Kennedy sustained a broken back, forcing him to campaign for his first full Senate term from a hospital bed. He won the election with almost 75% of the vote.

Then, on June 5, 1968, his brother Robert, then a New York senator, was shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on the night that he won the California Democratic presidential primary; he died the next day. Kennedy delivered an eloquent, often-quoted eulogy at the funeral in Washington, praising his brother in a breaking voice as "a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it."

After Richard M. Nixon narrowly won the presidency in 1968, Kennedy became the early favorite to mount a challenge four years later.

The accident at Chappaquiddick the following year crushed those ambitions. As Lerner wrote in "Ted and the Kennedy Legend: A Study in Character and Destiny" (1980), this self-inflicted wound, more than any other event, "blocked his path to the White House, called his credibility into question and damaged the Kennedy legend." Kennedy had flown to Chappaquiddick that July 18 to sail in a regatta and later throw a party for six young women who had worked in Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign. Chappaquiddick is near Martha's Vineyard, an island off the Massachusetts coast.

According to an account given by Kennedy in a televised speech carried nationwide a week after the accident, the party went on until the early hours. Kopechne, one of the campaign aides, wanted to go back to Martha's Vineyard, where the group was staying. Kennedy volunteered to drive her to the ferry.

But, Kennedy recounted, he took a wrong turn and drove the car off a narrow wooden bridge and into a tidal pond. The car toppled over on its roof. Kennedy said he tried to rescue Kopechne and that he had suffered a "cerebral concussion as well as shock" in the accident, which might explain "the various inexplicable, inconsistent and inconclusive things I said and did," including his failure to notify authorities for 10 hours. This delay, he said, was "indefensible."

This explanation, doubted by many, came after Kennedy had been in seclusion for several hours after the accident with a large number of political and legal advisors. At the same time he made his statement, Kennedy also announced that he was pleading guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, for which he received a suspended two-month jail sentence and had his driving license taken away for a year. He put his political fate in the hands of his constituents.

The incident marked, as President Nixon privately gloated at the time, "the end of Teddy," at least as a viable presidential foe. "That will be around his neck forever," Nixon later told his White House chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman.

Kennedy surprised many by easily winning reelection to the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts in 1970, albeit by a smaller margin than in 1964.

But, as Nixon predicted, Chappaquiddick would curtail further presidential aspirations, as his most serious attempt in the 1980 Democratic primary contest finally made clear.

Kennedy had tangled repeatedly with Carter over national health insurance and energy policy, but the decision to mount a liberal challenge to an incumbent Democrat was nevertheless startling.

And from the start, it was clear that Kennedy had miscalculated, that questions about Chappaquiddick would not go away.

Although he stayed in the race until the very end, he could claim nothing more than having damaged Carter's chances against Reagan.

Kennedy turned his talents to the Senate. A master legislator, he seemed to reach his full potential in his continued efforts to champion the poor, abused and deprived. When his party was out of power in the Senate, Kennedy adjusted to being a member of the minority and, backed by one of the best congressional staffs in Washington, was able to get things done that others could not.

For example, in 1996, working in tandem with Sen. Nancy Kassebaum (R-Kan.), he pushed through legislation that guaranteed Americans the right to buy health insurance and limited the length of time that an insurer could deny coverage for a specific "preexisting" medical condition.

Also in 1996, Kennedy spearheaded legislation to raise the minimum wage, achieved largely because of his willingness to couple that liberal cause with a package of business tax cuts that Republicans favored.

In 1999, he sponsored and passed legislation to allow the handicapped to work without losing Medicaid health benefits. And he was one of the Senate authors of the "patients' bill of rights."

Though in 2000 he worked with President George W. Bush on strengthening education standards, Kennedy did not abandon the frayed banner of liberalism. In early 2002, he was one of only a handful of Democrats to openly call for repeal of parts of the Bush tax cuts enacted the previous year.

In the end, he would live decades longer than his brother John, who died at 46, and his brother Robert, who died at 42. Before and after his 24-year marriage to Joan Bennett ended in 1983, Kennedy had a well-earned reputation for drinking and carousing with women. In the spring of 1991, he was forced to testify in the trial of his 30-year-old nephew, William Kennedy Smith, who was charged with having raped a woman near the family beach house in Palm Beach, Fla., after a late-night drinking bout with his Uncle Ted at a local bar. Smith, the son of Kennedy's sister Jean and her late husband, Stephen Smith, was acquitted.

In October 1991, Kennedy made a public apology of sorts at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, in which he said he recognized "the faults in the conduct of my private life."

"I realize that I alone am responsible for them, and I am the one who must confront them," he said. Unlike his brothers, he said, he had been given "length of years and time," and he said he was determined "to give all that I have to advance the causes for which I have stood for almost a third of a century."

In 1992, Kennedy married Washington lawyer Victoria Reggie, a move that friends said settled and re-energized him. The 6-foot-2 senator kept more conventional work hours while also stepping up his work pace in the Senate.

"People measure me against my brothers' 'performance,' " Kennedy said in a 1983 New York Times interview. "It's always been with me. But I like to believe that during the time I've been in the Senate that I've made some contribution. I take some satisfaction in that. My brothers were very much their own people. I like to think that I'm my own man."

Besides his wife, Kennedy is survived by his daughter, Kara Kennedy Allen, his son Edward Jr. and another son, Patrick, who followed his father into politics, serving in the House representing Rhode Island. Kennedy also is survived by grandchildren and sister Jean Kennedy Smith.


richard.simon@latimes.com

Luther is a former Times staff writer and editor.

Cap-And-Trade Is Refinery Killer

Source: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=336089976159431

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, August 25, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Energy Policy: A new study shows that Waxman-Markey will increase prices at the pump, deepen our dependence on foreign oil and shred our ability to turn crude into gasoline. Even fuel-efficient cars will still need fuel.

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Read More: Energy

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Oil may bubble up out of the ground, but gasoline does not. It's made in those ugly little NIMBY places called refineries we are loath to build anymore because we're too busy trying to save the Earth rather than our economy and American jobs.

When Hurricane Katrina shut down 20% of our refining capacity in a single day and raised gas prices in a single week by 45 cents a gallon, it showed how stretched to capacity our refineries were and are. Throw in the requirement for boutique fuels that vary by season and location, and our vulnerability to disruption is immense.

The number of refineries and total capacity to produce gasoline in the U.S. peaked in 1981, with 324 refineries able to process 18.6 million barrels of crude oil a day. Today, with U.S. demand for oil more than 20% higher, refinery capacity is roughly 17% lower.

Refineries operate near full capacity in the summer, leaving the nation's fuel supply chain vulnerable to disruption. That was the case a year ago, when Hurricanes Gustav and Ike shut down most Gulf Coast refineries, and gas stations throughout the Southeast ran out of fuel.

With climate-change hype taking legislative form in HR 2454 and the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, and with fossil fuels on the endangered species list, not many in Washington seem concerned that Waxman-Markey, among its other costs to jobs and growth, will further endanger our gasoline supply.

In 1981, the U.S. had 324 refineries with a total capacity of processing 18.6 million barrels of crude a day. A study by global consulting firm EnSys Energy shows that Waxman-Markey would reduce that figure to 12.2 million barrels a day from its current production rate of 14.5 million from just 141 active refineries.

Without Waxman-Markey, U.S. production rates would grow to 16.4 million barrels a day. With it, not only will refinery production rates drop but utilization rates as well, from about 83% today to about 63.4% in 2030.

The drop would have to be made up by foreign imports, the study finds, meaning the U.S. could end up relying on other countries for some 19% of its refined fuel, nearly twice the amount it imports today.

HR 2454 — which passed 219 to 212 on June 26, with the help of eight Republican congressmen — seemed to be aimed specifically at refineries.

Waxman-Markey is essentially a carbon tax on emissions. Companies will buy, sell and trade the emission permits. The bill also issues a fixed number of "allowances" for emissions, with companies paying for emissions they generate above those allowances.

Refiners are held responsible under the bill for 44% of all emissions, including their own (about 4% of the total), as well as the consumer emissions from heating oil, planes, trains and automobiles, as well as other petroleum uses. Yet they are allocated only 2.25% of emission allowances.

Production at U.S. refineries would drop, while production at refineries in countries that do not limit emissions would rise. The U.S. Gulf Coast, which houses the nation's largest refining complex, would bear "the full brunt" of competition posed by foreign refiners and the impact of higher energy prices in the U.S., according to EnSys consultant Martin Tallett.

Prohibition banned the manufacture and sale of alcohol. Now we seem to be headed in the same direction with oil and gasoline. For the sake of our economic future, not only do we need to drill, baby, drill, but we also need to refine, baby, refine.

Woe, Canada!

Source: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=335660247180517

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, August 20, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Medical Care: A leaked report shows that Vancouver's health authority is considering cutting thousands of surgeries to balance the budget. However organized, government-run health care inevitably leads to rationing.

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IBD Exclusive Series: Government-Run Healthcare: A Prescription For Failure

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Defenders of ObamaCare continually point out that their plan is not like Canada's, that holding that country's system up as an example of impending medical doom is invalid. Canada's system is different. Instead of having a single national plan, Canada's national health insurance, a kind of public option, is composed of 13 interlocking provincial and territorial plans, all framed under the Canada Health Act.

But based on a report leaked to the Vancouver Sun, this is a distinction without a difference. Even if you break it up into smaller pieces, it's still state-run medical insurance with decisions on who gets care, based on cost and funding, not need. That is called rationing.

According to the leaked document, the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority is looking to close nearly a quarter of its operating rooms starting next month and to cut 6,250 surgeries. They include 24% of cases scheduled from September to March and 10% of all medically necessary elective procedures this fiscal year.

The plan proposes cutbacks to neurosurgery, ophthalmology, vascular surgery and 11 other specialized areas. Brian Brodie, a Canadian doctor and president of the British Columbia Medical Association, has called the proposed surgical cuts a "nightmare."

"Why would you begin your cost-cutting measures on medically necessary surgery?" he asks. "I can't think of a worse place."

Dr. Anne Doig, the new president of the Canadian Medical Association, says it's clear Canadians are getting less than optimal care. "We all agree that the system is imploding. We all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize," she told the Canadian Press.

As we have noted, roughly 900,000 patients of all ages are waiting for beds in Canada, according to the Fraser Institute. More than four times as many MRI units per capita are in the U.S. as in Canada, and we have twice as many CT scanners.

Canada's perfectly planned and cost-effective system had no room at the inn for Ava Isabella Stinson, born in Hamilton, Ontario. Of necessity she had to be sent across the border to a Buffalo, N.Y., hospital to receive critically needed neonatal care. She had no time to be put on a Canadian waiting list.

At the American hospital, Stinson got the care she needed under a system President Obama has labeled "unsustainable."

A similar situation exists in Britain under the National Health Service. There, local health care "trusts" supervise medical delivery. Under the NHS system, about 1,000 victims of rare forms of cancer were denied drug treatment the past three years, according to an analysis by the Rare Cancers Forum printed in the London Telegraph.

Stella Pendleton, executive director of the charity, said: "The NHS is forcing desperate patients into the cruel situation where the chances of their being given the treatment they need depend on where they live. No patient should be denied a treatment recommended by a doctor simply because the cancer it treats is too rare for the medicine to be licensed."

Yet this is what inevitably happens under all forms of socialized medicine. This is why Daniel Hannan, a member of the European Parliament from Britain, has called the NHS a "60-year mistake" and encouraged Americans to "ponder our example and tremble."

When asked about ObamaCare on Fox News, Hannan said: "I find it incredible that a free people living in a country dedicated and founded in the cause of independence and freedom can seriously be thinking about adopting such a system."

So do we.

Some still say that what has happened in Britain and Canada can't happen here, that ObamaCare is too different.

Frankly, we'd like a second opinion.