Massachusetts leads in health coverage, Texas dead last

One can still hope that oneof these days Mitt Romney will wake up and say what he knows to be the truth:  `Romneycare', like `Obamacare', is a good thing because it provides people with health insurance which makes them healthy.  Being healthy is cheaper than being sick.  Healthy people are more productive than sick people. Thanks to ThinkProgress for the graph

Ted Kennedy - Why universal comprehensive health insurance reform

Every American should have the same health insurance as the members of the Congress of the United States.

This is the cause of my life. It is a key reason that I defied my illness last summer to speak at the Democratic convention in Denver—to support Barack Obama, but also to make sure, as I said, "that we will break the old gridlock and guarantee that every American...will have decent, quality health care as a fundamental right and not just a privilege." 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.

— Ted Kennedy

April 3, 2009