He hasn't quite made it back to DC just yet, but that hasn't stopped Senator Kennedy from embarking on an aggressive health care reform initiative, drawing from the successes of the program in Massachusetts and lessons learned from past attempts to implement universal health care.
The Boston Globe reported yesterday that Senator Kennedy's staff has pulled together meetings with an array of health care advocates and experts to focus on comprehensive reform that he hopes to implement with the Obama administration.
"Making sure each American has access to quality, affordable healthcare is the cause of Senator Kennedy's life." said Kennedy spokeswoman Melissa Wagoner.
Also mentioned in the piece was a recent summit held by the the Senate Finance Committee on health care reform. C-SPAN covered a bit of it, including opening remarks from Sen. Max Baucus and Sen. Chuck Grassley, and a session with Fed chair Ben Bernanke. The full conference is now available at the Finance Committee website, and I'm just starting to sift through it. I picked the session "Trends in Employer-Sponsored Health Coverage" to start with, chaired by Sen. Kerry and Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR), with Andy Stern of the SEIU, Carl Redman of Innovation Construction and Bear Electric, Craig Barrett from Intel, Jonathan Gruber from MIT and Paul Fronstin of the Employee Benefit Research Institute.
Here are Sen. Kerry's opening remarks.
Video Credit: C-SPAN
Full video of all of the sessions are at the Finance website. Check the agenda for a list of sessions and links to the video. I wish I could give a recommendation, but it's going to take a while for me to get through all this.
Thank goodness for long weekends.
