Making a difference

Few people in Congress left their fingerprints on more healthcare legislative accomplishments than the late Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, who served for 47 years. Kennedy is the only member of Congress to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. He was an original sponsor of some of the nation’s most impactful healthcare laws, including the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which has provided coverage to tens of millions of uninsured young Americans since 1997. After getting caught up in a contentious budget debate earlier this year, CHIP was extended for another six years. Kennedy also pushed through the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, enacted in 1986, requiring hospital emergency rooms to treat all patients regardless of their ability to pay; and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, which established broad civil rights protections against discrimination for all individuals with disabilities. While Kennedy clearly had no problem being a partisan street fighter, all of his major legislative achievements required plenty of working across the aisle with colleagues.

In 2008, President George W. Bush signed the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, enacting legislation introduced in the House by Kennedy’s youngest son, Rep. Patrick Kennedy. The law requires insurers to provide coverage for mental health and substance abuse disorders equal to medical/surgical benefits, especially cost-sharing and treatment limitations. The elder Kennedy helped shepherd the law through the upper chamber. He would pass away less than a year later at the age of 77 after a battle with brain cancer.

Effective advocacy is just as critical as workable policy for meeting healthcare objectives—and that’s especially true in the battle to raise awareness about individual illnesses.

Long before the wildly popular Ice Bucket Challenge raised the profile of the battle against ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease,

Nancy Brinker was making it her life’s work to defeat the cancer that took her sister’s life at a young age.

Brinker’s sister was Susan G. Komen, who died of breast cancer at age 36 in 1980. Brinker founded the Susan G. Komen Cancer Foundation in 1982 with only $200, a broken typewriter and a list of possible donors. Nearly 40 years later and with more than $2 billion raised through events like Race for the Cure, who doesn’t link the color pink with the ongoing fight in the memory of Susan G. Komen?

As a colleague once said, Brinker “literally ignited the global movement against breast cancer.” She was inducted in 2007.