Kennedy Fights for Health Care Till the Very End

Ted Kennedy said securing heath insurance for everyone in America was the most important cause of his lifetime, and he fought hard for it even after being stricken with brain cancer. The senator lost his bout with the disease, dying late Tuesday. He was 77.

Clearly, his voice is missed in the current debate on health reform because the longtime senator and patriarch of America's most famous political family was able to bring Democrats and Republicans together on major issues in which there seemed to be no compromise.

"He would find a niche they would be able to agree on," says Adam Clymer, a Kennedy biographer and DailyBeast contributor.

Never considered to be a great friend of business, Kennedy had a special ability to reach across the aisle of the Senate and bring Republicans into the fold to support his agenda, while convincing Democrats to move toward a more centrist approach to get bills passed. Among his major accomplishments: the State Children's Health Insurance Program in 1997, which helps children of poor families get insurance, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

"He had a unique way of sitting down with the parties at a table and making the right concessions, which really are the essence of successful negotiations. So it's huge that he's absent not only because of my personal affection for him but because I think health care reform might be in a very different place right now," Republican Sen. John McCain told George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week last Sunday.

Kennedy began talking about insuring every American back in the 1960s. As he endorsed Obama at the Democratic National Convention last year, he called health care "the cause of my life." He repeated that statement in a piece he wrote for Newsweek last month.

"It is a key reason that I defied my illness last summer to speak at the Democratic convention in Denver—to support Barack Obama," Kennedy wrote. "For four decades I have carried this cause—from the floor of the United States Senate to every part of this country. It has never been merely a question of policy; it goes to the heart of my belief in a just society. Now the issue has more meaning for me—and more urgency—than ever before. But it's always been deeply personal, because the importance of health care has been a recurrent lesson throughout most of my 77 years."

Now Democrats will have to forge ahead on health reform without his negotiating skills—and possibly with one less vote from a party member as lawmakers head back to Washington next month.

Just last week, Kennedy sent a letter to Gov. Deval L. Patrick and leaders of the Massachusetts House and Senate urging them to change state law to allow the governor to appoint a temporary replacement, the Boston Globe reported.

Kennedy said he wanted the Democratic governor to be allowed to pick a successor because he didn't want Massachusetts to be left with just one vote in the U.S. Senate, the Globe said. In 2004, state law was changed to ban the governor from replacing a member of the U.S. Senate. The law says voters will decide who replaces a senator but staging a special election could take five months, missing President Obama's deadline for passing reform. So far, there's been no action in the Massachusetts statehouse.

While the letter didn't expressly mention health care reform, the Globe quoted unnamed aides saying that was the motivation for Kennedy, who championed the issue in his long tenure in the Senate. The Globe quoted an unnamed Kennedy family confidant saying the senator would have tried to fly to Washington to cast a vote for health reform despite his flagging health.

President Obama will need all the votes he can get with public support for reform waning. Kennedy's ability to negotiate with Republicans and persuade Democrats would be key to moving forward on the debate, Clymer says.

As it stands now, the fate of reform is very uncertain.

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Brett Chase covers health care for Portfolio.com and writes the blog Heavy Doses.