Senator Edward Kennedy’s many inspiring messages include: “Let us at long last make the basic right to health care a reality for all.” And at the Democratic National Convention last summer: “This is the cause of my life — new hope that we will break the old gridlock and guarantee that every American — north, south, east, west, young, old — will have decent, quality health care as a fundamental right and not a privilege.”

Lessons for policymakers will endure, and, as Robert Creamer argues in the Huffington Post, the most fitting tribute to Kennedy would be if we now stopped "debating the fundamental principle that all of us deserve the same quality health care – no matter how much we earn, or who our parents are, or where we live, or the color of our skin, or how old or sick we may be. That principle is accepted worldwide as a central element of what it means to live in a civilized society. It is a core tenant of what we understand to be universal human rights."

Read the rest of Creamers’ powerful post here.