Ted Kennedy and Universal Health Care

I've been scratching my head about the Ted Kennedy brain surgery thing. Here's a guy from Boston who works in Washington DC. New York City is in between the two. And he goes to North Carolina to get the surgery done.

It's my impression that both Boston and New York City have outstanding doctors. Not that they're all great, but there's plenty of good ones. Some people in the Albany area will go to one of these places if they have a serious medical problem. I remember my dad going to Boston when he had a brain tumor. I'd guess that the Washington area also has some pretty good docs.

So why does Kennedy go to Duke? I'm guessing that Doctor Allan Freedman is the best brain surgeon in the whole world, and it's not even a close call. We can all respect Ted Kennedy's desire to have the best.

A bigger issue is what this says about universal health care, one of the great challenges we supposedly face these days (if you're listening to national politicians anyway). Our current medical system has a variety of things going on: Medicare for seniors, Medicaid for the poor, mostly private health insurance for most people with jobs, and a big chunk of people with no insurance.

Oh, and there's one more ... the congressional health plan. That's where congressmen and senators get to go to the best doctors in the world, skipping ahead of everyone else waiting to see them, and the taxpayers pay for the whole ride. I'm betting Kennedy didn't have to pay a copay or deductible for his surgery.

So here's a simple proposal for any universal health care plan. Make sure that members of Congress and the Senate have to be in that plan. They get the same deal as the rest of us. Yeah, that'll be the day.