Ted Kennedy Quotes
Health care is not just another commodity. It is not a gift to be rationed based on the ability to pay. It is time to make universal health insurance a national priority, so that the basic right to health care can finally become a reality for every American.
Kennedy, Edward M. Address on Universal Health Care. 2007.
There were many countries whose laws proclaimed that health care was a right but could not deliver the health care to many of its citizens. However, every developed country except the United States considered health care a right and delivered health care to its people. The large majority of U. S. citizens received good health care but not as a right.
That particular Libertarian platform called for the abolition / repeal of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Post Office, Federal election Commission and campaign finance laws. Extreme radical ideas such as this are not typical of Libertarian Party positions before or afterwards. The quotation illustrates that there are people in America who would end public education if they could. The quotation also illustrates how a small cadre of people can capture control of a political party and create a platform that is their own personal views which may be different from most of the party members or the historical position that the party has taken. In 1980 the Libertarian Party Vice Presidential Candidate was David Koch, one half of the billionaire conservative Koch brothers. Their money financed the Libertarian Party in that year and David Koch’s views then prevailed in the party platform. Historically, the Koch brothers moved from a minor third party to the Republican party at the beginning of the 21st century when their money was able to help drive the party very far to the right from the traditions of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.
The "right to life, liberty, and the persuit of happiness" to Sanders an many others implies a right to Healh Care in that life depends on health care in many cases and it is hard to persue happiness is one is not sufficiently healthy. Others argue that there is no explicit mention of Health Care per se in the Constitution as originally written or in the Bill of Rights or subsequent amendments.
Edward Moore Kennedy was an American politician and lawyer who served as a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts for almost 47 years, from 1962 until his death in 2009. A member of the Democratic Party and the Kennedy political family, he was the second most senior member of the Senate when he died and is the fourth-longest-continuously-serving senator in United States history. Kennedy was the younger brother of President John F. Kennedy and U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and was the father of Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy.
