<h2>A job Teddy just missed <BR>seeing accomplished</h2>

There have been so many topics I've wanted to delve into here since I last posted. I just never found the time to actually ... well, delve.

So, before we bid farewell to 2009, I thought I'd make an appearance to at least touch base on one of them.

I just finished reading "True Compass," the memoir of Ted Kennedy, who by the timeframe mentioned in the book, must have wrapped up his work not long before he died. He alludes to the brain tumor in the final chapter, along with his appearance at the 2008 Democratic National Convention and Barack Obama's inauguration early this year, and there is a picture of Kennedy with Obama (and a couple other congressmen) from April of this year at the White House.

The above is actually beside the point of my post today. The book did allow me to look at Teddy in a slightly different way. I found his candor on a lot of the book topics, whether it be related to the Congress and legislative issues or his personal life, refreshing. I'm sure staunch Republicans or Kennedy haters will find the extent of candor insufficient, or aver that Kennedy's version of Chappaquiddick was hardly thorough (or even complete). But that, too, is not the point of this post.

I actually found myself most interested, throughout the read, in the extent of Kennedy's involvement of some his pet legislative projects, the foremost of which -- one that goes back decades and, alas, one he will not see to fruition -- was health care.

The book laid the foundation for why all the Kennedys embraced issues and legislation directed at the downtrodden as so important to them. Yes, the Kennedy family was very well off, but Ted Kennedy and his siblings were raised by two very resolved parents to never brandish their wealth. In fact, the Kennedy siblings were strongly and repeatedly encouraged to seek out those who were far less fortunate, to strive to understand those people's plights and to invest whatever clout their societal or political stature allowed them toward helping the disadvantaged secure and enjoy every right that was enjoyed by the privileged.

Ted Kennedy embraced health care for the masses as an issue early in his Senate career. It was incredible -- and very sad -- to read how presidential administration after administration either shot it down or simply refused to consider it, thanks in large part to the extraordinarily powerful insurance and medical lobbies.

So it was with this fresh read in mind that I've been trying to follow Obama's attempts to make happen what Kennedy tried to bring to so many millions of Americans -- affordable health insurance. The strange perks we're seeing key legislators wresting in return for their votes for the legislation should tell you plenty about how difficult it had been through the years to extract elected representatives in both chambers from their comfortable and cozy beds with the insurance and medical lobby.

Equally telling is the degree of dilution of some key points of both measures in the two houses, the foremost of which being the one-payer option that would have totally removed control of funds to pay for health costs from the coffers of stingy, profit-hoarding private-sector insurers.

In the interim, I marvel how, as Obama gets farther than any president has ever gotten to reaching out and helping the giantly, under-insured lower class (and probably a good amount of middle-classers, too) people in our nation, he also is taking a political hit for doing so. Granted, the timing of funding the health care measure -- so soon after someone had to do something to bail out the tanking auto industry -- is not ideal. But if the uptick of Wall Street in the past six months is any indication, the president's move to revive the country's financial health should give us hope that there will be something of merit to come from the health care legislation.

My only regret, and probably a regret shared by those who knew how passionate Ted Kennedy regarded health-care coverage for the masses, is that he will not be here to see it finally arrive.