Simply put -- he'd probably be dead before he would have ever gotten treatment for his brain tumor if required to rely on a government-run universal health care scheme.

Consider Jennifer Bell of Norwich, England. In 2006, the 22-year-old complained of headaches for months - but Britain's National Health Service made her wait a year to see a neurologist.

Then she had to wait more than three months before should could get what the NHS decided was only a "relatively urgent" MRI scan. Three days before the MRI appointment, she died.

Consider, too, the chemo drug Kennedy is receiving: Temodar, the first oral medicine for brain tumors in 25 years.

Temodar has been widely used in this country since the FDA approved it in 2000. But a British health-care rationing agency, the National Institute for Comparative Effectiveness, ruled that, while the drug helps people live longer, it wasn't worth the money - and denied coverage for it.

That's the UK.

Things aren't any better in Canada.

Things are no different in Canada, where the wait for an MRI (once you finally get a referral) has grown to 10 weeks. For Canadians relying on their government health care, the average wait time from diagnosis of cancer to surgery is beyond the guideline set by both the US and European societies for surgical oncology.

And HealthCanada, the government system, similar refuses to pay for treatments that are often covered in America.

Chad Curley, a 37-year-old auto worker from Windsor, Ontario, had a brain tumor like Kennedy's but can't have surgery because his is too large to be operable.

His tumor didn't respond to Temodar and the same doctors now treating Sen. Kennedy told him and his wife that the Avastin combination could stop his tumor from growing and add months to his life. But HealthCanada wouldn't pay to use Avastin to treat his tumor.

Chad's family and friends scraped together the $5,000 for the first round of treatment in mid-November; they later saw Chad's left-side paralysis start to subside. But the money ran out - and he died on Feb. 21.

But then again, maybe Ted Kennedy would have gotten the best treatment -- after all, the bootlegger's son has lot's of cash, so he would be able to pay for whatever he needed (if the government didn't make it illegal to go outside the system, like Hillary Clinton proposed 15 years ago). That would mean he would get the sort of medical care that average Americans would not be able to get under the sort of health care scheme he and his party are pushing -- medical care that is standard today in the United States.

And the rest of us would simply have to die for the collective good. Sounds like the old Soviet Union to me -- the elite get the best care, and the people suffer.

Don Surber also comments.