Odds 'n Ends - Eunice, Ted, Health Care

It was July in the summer of 1980 when I met Eunice Kennedy Shriver. I and my public relations agency, Immedia, Inc., had been drafted by a friend of the Kennedy family to handle PR, pro bono, for a series of "Rose Parades" scheduled to be held on July 22 across Massachusetts to honor Rose Kennedy's 90th birthday and to raise money for the Special Olympics, which Eunice had founded in the 1960s.

The year 1980 was a watershed year for the Kennedy family. In the footsteps of his brothers Jack and Bobby, Ted was running for the Democratic nomination for President. And in the Kennedy tradition, just about the entire family was involved in the campaign.

A couple of weeks before the scheduled Rose Parades, I was asked to pick up Eunice and her husband Sargent Shriver at Boston's Logan Airport. After we had retrieved their luggage and settled into the limo, Eunice asked me, "So, how are we doing with everything?"

I assumed she was asking about preparations for the Rose Parade, so I started to give her an answer about event publicity.

"No, no," she interrupted, "I was asking about Teddy's campaign!"

Of course she was; I should have known better.

As I write this three decades later, "Teddy" is waging his most serious campaign, a campaign he is destined to lose. He is battling brain cancer.

It would be terribly sad and ironic if Ted Kennedy were to pass from the scene before the national debate on reforming health care is concluded. If Ted had his way, all Americans would have the same access to the kind of health insurance coverage that has paid his medical bills since he went to Washington as a U.S. Senator in November, 1962.

Maybe it would do us all some good to recall what Kennedy said in his Democratic National Convention "Party of Hope" concession speech in 1980; it's as true today as it was then:

"We must not surrender to the relentless medical inflation that can bankrupt almost anyone and that may soon break the budgets of government at every level. Let us insist on real controls over what doctors and hospitals can charge, and let us resolve that the state of a family's health shall never depend on the size of a family's wealth.The President, the Vice President, the members of Congress have a medical plan that meets their needs in full, and whenever senators and representatives catch a little cold, the Capitol physician will see them immediately, treat them promptly, fill a prescription on the spot. We do not get a bill even if we ask for it, and when do you think was the last time a member of Congress asked for a bill from the Federal Government? And I say again, as I have before, if health insurance is good enough for the President, the Vice President, the Congress of the United States, then it's good enough for you and every family in America."

I add my voice to Kennedy's and to the voices of millions of Americans when it comes to health care - let's make health care reform a reality in 2009! Let's do it to honor Ted, for sure, but let's do it, more importantly, to honor the American dream.

"For all those whose cares have been our concern," Sen. Kennedy said in 1980, "the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."