I remember back in 1979 when Teddy Kennedy was promoting his health care for all plan and virtually everything he said made perfect sense to me but maybe that was because I had just lived in Vancouver, B.C., in Canada for six years and had two daughters born there and was then living in Sacramento, CA., where the stark difference between the two countries' health care systems meant that I was forced to pay a hundred dollars a month in union dues to the Carpenters Union local I was in, instead of the ten dollars I paid in Vancouver and all because of the health care coverage. Or maybe it was because when I became active in selling real estate and left the Carpenters Union I was forced into the deductible game with the insurance companies; whereby even when you pay for a policy there is always a deductible; in other words until YOU pay a set amount of cash for your health care the insurance company pays nothing and you STILL have to pay the premieums until the insurance company begins to pay, after your $2,000 (or whatever) deductible is met. Or maybe it was because of the walk-in clinics I was forced into using, during the 60's & 70's, where if you didn't have the cash you were put outside, with the trash.

In boxing you stand in front of a mirror and box with yourself, or climb into the ring and throw punches into the air; it's called shadowboxing, so named for your shadow because if you can't afford a mirror you can always box with your shadow but you, of course, can never win, as your shadow is just that, a shadow, it's not a real person, not like an opponent, another fighter actually boxing with you but you box on with it because you are trying to get in shape to fight a real person and you sweat and (supposedly) learn things when you box with your shadow.

And so, it seems, we Americans are boxing with our shadows over this Universal Health Care System and yet I cannot understand why anyone can not understand it. Teddy Kennedy had a lot of power and yet he couldn't convince the powers that be that it was Universal Heath Care that made sense; he had charts and grafts and plenty of facts to back him up but he couldn't convince enough of them but maybe that was because these "un-convinciable" politicians were "beholding" to the insurance lobbies.

And now, Teddy is gone and his voice speaks no more on behalf of those with no voice and we move on to so many other problems, real estate prices tumbling, escalating and on the brink of runaway inflation, huge insurance companies and banks continually being bailed out, even as our deficit continues to mount and we quickly forget him and his Health Care plan for all or do we? All these problems are interconnected, just as life is a circle so are its problems and this is a big circle and one that Teddy Kennedy worked on for forty years.

How is it that we can call ourselves the United States of America and yet the rest of the civilized World, except us, is united for health care for all their citizens but US? How is it that we can call ourselves a Democracy and yet watch as fellow citizens, guilty of only one "crime", that of being poor, die as a result of being abandoned by their country's health care system? how is it that we are going to pull ourselves out of this toxic mess we are in when we can't even see that "United We Stand, Divided We Fall," is more than just an idle saying and that until we save our fellow citizens we cannot save ourselves, our system, because the system is broken beyond all repair. When something, for example: an auto part, is broken beyond all repair we throw it out and replace it with a new part and unless we are willing to throw out our system and start over we need to change our health care system to one that covers every American citizen because health care is not a medical question, it is not a monetary question, it is a human question and it is a human right that we treat every person equally. Which one of you can look at a newborn child and say: "he doesn't deserve to be saved if he becomes sick?" and yet that is what you do every time you say that because his parents are poor they deserve no heath care and neither, then, does their newborn child.

No one knows how this health care thing will play out, as no one knows how this Capitalism thing will either. But, I know one thing,Teddy Kennedy's voice was loud enough and strong enough that he cast a long shadow over this land and now it is gone but maybe, just maybe, his shadow is still large enough to get us to stop fighting over this one issue and realize that until we start to repair the system the circle will remain broken and this would be a perfect beginning because how can you repair any system if a third of the participants are sick and in need of care but are not getting it? Hopefully Teddy's shadow can help us win this battle because otherwise we are going to continue fighting each other, as well as our own shadows and then, nobody wins because you can't, remember, it's called shadowboxing.