PERSEVERANCE

Kennedy's Final Push for Health Care

Cancer-stricken senator isn't out of the game.

Ted Kennedy may have been sidelined by brain cancer over the past year, but the senator seems determined to have a hand in the creation of universal health care—the goal he has worked toward for 46 years. He wakes up in the morning in his house on Cape Cod to a packet of news clippings his wife has put together, the Los Angeles Times reports, and if there's a hearing going on at the Capitol, he watches it on his computer. He exerts whatever influence he can from his sickbed, advising his Washington aides via phone. "He has lived for this day, when America would finally extend this right to every citizen," his son Patrick, a Democratic congressman, said in a recent interview, with tears in his eyes. "There's no doubt if he could, he would be here in the thick of this." Kennedy's illness is bringing a sense of urgency to a usually slow-moving Congress, the paper reports, "with friends on both sides of the aisle mindful of passing a bill in time for him to see it signed."