Main Street

Health Care Round-Up

• In three quarters of medical bankruptcies, the person had health insurance.
• Have you read the one about how Ted Kennedy’s greatest regret was that he didn’t compromise with Nixon to get universal health care? That’s not so true, as it turns out.
  

  But the notion that Kennedy “regretted” his failure to cut a deal with Nixon is largely bogus, according to Adam Clymer, a former Times reporter and the author of “Edwards M. Kennedy: A Biography.” Rather, Clymer says, Kennedy’s regret was that the differences between both parties were unbridgeable, making agreement impossible and losing a historic opportunity — not that his side had failed to give up enough to get that agreement.

  Jed Lewison has more.

• Health care isn’t the only way Whole Foods is bad to working people.
• Too, too many lives lost to our broken health care system.
  

  Ms. De La Cruz says a surgeon told her he could have helped her brother, but he arrived “two years too late.” If not for all the delays and denials, she says, her brother would be alive today.

  She is still crusading, sharing the story with lawmakers in Washington and at rallies, including one in Times Square this past weekend. At the very least, she says, insurance companies should not be allowed to turn down patients with pre-existing conditions.

  “If my brother had been able to buy health insurance, he would never have been in this situation,” she said. “No one should ever have to go through what we’ve been through. Eric should still be alive.”