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HOME > ABOUT > PRESS > IN MEMORIAM - TED KENNEDY
Published - August 26, 2009
In Memoriam -Ted Kennedy
by John Severson
Last night’s death of Senator Theodore F. Kennedy (D-Mass) is incredibly sad for community health center folks across the country. In his 47 years in the Senate, Ted Kennedy championed many pieces of legislation- civil rights, immigration rights, creation of State Children’s Health Insurance and education programs. But he was, for even longer, the most loyal supporter that community health centers had, championing federal funding for the program since its beginnings.
Those of us who have been to National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC Washington conferences have heard him speak year after year with unmatched passion about our programs and what we do. And over and over again he protected our programs from assault and supported expansion of health centers. Without that growth in appropriations newer health centers such as Coastal Health Alliance would not now be federally funded – or in business, since our federal funds have long given us financial stability CHA did not always know.
One of the Senator’s great moments occurred just after President Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory as President swept in a Republican majority in Congress. They arrived with a task of dismantling many programs and turning them over to the States in the form of block grants.
Senator Kennedy had just lost his important Health and Education subcommittee to relatively new Senator Orrin Hatch, a conservative Republican from Utah. But Kennedy was not one to sit idly by and watch things he believed in fail. Adopting a bipartisan approach he began trying to win Orrin Hatch over to believing in health centers. A health center block grant passed, but Kennedy succeeded in getting so many conditions into the bill that a State had to meet to take the money over that only one state ever even tried- West Virginia. Using the restrictions Kennedy got into the law, NACHC attorneys blocked the move in federal court, saying West Virginia had failed to meet the letter of the law, and the attempt was over. Two years later, Kennedy had convinced Hatch and his Republican colleagues to repeal the block grant language and restore all of the independence of the CHC program. Hatch and other Republicans remain health center supporters.
I don’t think any of us has any question what would have happened in California in this awful budget year if we were still funded out of a block grant. The CHC funds would have been taken and used to fill the deficit elsewhere, just as Governor Schwarzenegger has taken health centers’ State grant programs. And none of us would be working here.
Senator Kennedy has in some way touched all of our lives for the better.
John Severson
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