Mike Huckabee: Obama-Style Health Care Might Have Made Kennedy ‘Take Pain Pills and Die’

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Senator Ted Kennedy’s death had barely hit the news before we start hearing calls that Congress must hurry and pass the health care reform bill, and do it in his memory. That not only defies good taste–it defies logic.

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We certainly can and should respectively recognize his years of advocacy and work for the things that he truly believed in. But there is no good reason to rush through a giant, unread bill that would transform American health care and impact every citizen. But easily the worst reason to do it is in the name of someone who, perhaps inadvertently, gave us the most shining example of why this particular bill is so bad.

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It was President Obama himself who suggested that seniors who don’t have as long to live might want to just consider taking a pain pill instead of getting an expensive operation to cure them. Yet when Sen. Kennedy was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer at 77, did he give up on life and go home to take pain pills and die? Of course not. He freely did what most of us would do. He choose an expensive operation and painful follow up treatments. He saw his work as vitally important and so he fought for every minute he could stay on this earth doing it. He would be a very fortunate man if his heroic last few months were what future generations remember him most for.

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I want to see improvements in health care, too. But I think a better way to honor Ted Kennedy would be to ensure that every American has access to the latest private health care, as good as what senators receive.