Gulfstreaming Your Health Care

Good for the Goose

Ted Kennedy wants to equalize health care for everyone. This is something he hopes to get done now, before his newly diagnosed brain tumor, glioblastoma multiforme, takes him down from behind.

Equal health care for everyone.

Laudable.

To make health care equal for everyone, we, the people, are going to have to make sacrifices. Our choices will be limited, waiting times for diagnostic tests and procedures will be common, and the overall quality of the system will decline to that of other socialist programs like Canada.

So, what does Kennedy know about the fair and equal health care he wants US to have? Let's take a look.

The Best Care in the World

Ted Kennedy knows nothing about health care for the common man or the type of health care we are destined to receive under a nationalized system That's because he and his ilk -- including everyone in Washington -- get the best health care in the world all the time, and they will continue to get the red carpet treatment after health care reform reduces your care to patch quilt.

In previous posts here and here I discussed how Ted Kennedy had a seizure late one weekend night and the diagnosis was glioblastoma multiforme, an incurable cancer.

Immediately after his seizure, Kennedy was whisked to Harvard where a team of physicians gathered STAT to attend to him. The next day experts at Harvard and from around the world conferred with Kennedy to give him their opinions regarding his diagnosis and options.

In a move that is analogous to GM executives jetting to Washington to beg for bailout money, Kennedy (the health care reform Guru) then jetted to Duke to receive the best possible care by the best possible neurosurgeon, as advised by the best possible group of doctors --all within days of his seizure:

According to several news sources Kennedy consulted with

...his doctors at Mass General Hospital and "experts from around the country," Sen. Ted Kennedy decided to trust his treatment for a cancerous brain tumor to Dr.
Alan Friedman of Duke University Medical Center.

Is this the kind of care YOU will get if Kennedy's ideas about reform are institutionalized?

No. You will be relegated to a local oncology clinic where a dispirited foreign graduate will shuffle your papers, give you the routine by-the-book treatment options and then you will wait for whoever is available whenever he is available to actually get your treatment.

Kennedy -- and every other VIP demanding health care reform -- knows that their care will ever be secured by their money, or celebrity or influence.

You will not have those options.

One Evening on the Cape

In The Ointment


A funny thing happened to Teddy Kennedy just when --as fate would have it -- the rising sun for National Heal Care Reform was dawning. He had a seizure (a seizure is a convulsion, such as a young woman might have seconds after she succumbed and breathed in the water surrounding her trapped, un-rescued body).


It was last May, one night, at his 6-acre palatial Hyannisport compound in Cape Cod. No doubt it took time for those in the household to discriminate Teddy's behavior from a typical bout of inebriated drooling and lip chewing, but when he refused to sober-up, at some point, Teddy was whisked away to the Harvard Hospital System.

If Kennedy's treatment was similar to how other notables are cared for at top hospitals, then tens of thousands of dollars were spent in assuring security, privacy, and an expeditious round of diagnosis and treatment. No waiting in line. No semi-private room. No mistakes. The best doctors called in at all hours. The best, on call, all the time.

Once when Kennedy was hospitalized at a major institution in New York, they shut down a whole floor for him, at untold cost and inconvenience to many patients. No matter. After all, Ted Kennedy is not just anyone.

But you are just anyone. That will become important.

Kennedy undoubtedly had a STAT MRI or a noncontrast CT followed by an MRI,and was quickly diagnosed -- by the radiologist on duty -- as having a brain tumor. A biopsy the next day revealed a grim diagnosis with an equally grim prognosis: Glioblastoma Multiforme.

So Kennedy's quest for health care reform, just as it is rising to prominence in the current "change" environment may be a kingdom unseen by the long-fallen prince. Because a GBM is a rapidly fatal tumor with few treatment options.

What to do?

Why Is Kennedy's Tumor Important?

Kennedy's tumor

Why Kennedy's tumor?

Ted Kennedy, after years of plastering a cellphone to his ear, developed a Glioblastoma Multiforme -- the worst possible brain tumor -- deep to his ear in the parietal lobe of his brain.

Everything about Teddy's brain tumor (and perhaps Kennedy's life) is metaphorically relevant to the history, current state, and future of health care in the United States. And, just like Ted Kennedy, that health care is about to go in the wrong direction, much as the result of this man's insistence over the years that America was in the midst of a health care crisis.

Teddy's pre-morbid opinions and actions; his disease presentation; his familial and social history; his diagnosis, treatment, care and follow-up are all alike parables created perfectly for this time and our age and in line with the very subject which purportedly formed the center of his political universe -- a universe now invaded by the most wicked of wicked cancers.

Kennedy's Tumor is an incredibly clever device of destruction that seems to have been created by someone who knew what He was doing. It can't be stopped, can't be cured. Ted's tumor, now that it is established, will grow relentlessly until it finally overwhelms him.

The misapplication of the word crisis to the care of sick human beings -- as opposed to the insurance and distribution issues to which it actually pertains was the same tumor. Planted in the public's conscience it has grown -- despite all logical and moral efforts to stop it -- to where now it is overwhelming public consciousness and drastic measures are being taken to "cure" this disease.

Kennedy's tumor is a parable with many parallels and lessons. It will be a joy to unfold it, like an artichoke, until we get to the bitter hard pit.