Sen. Edward Kennedy has died of brain cancer. As the WSJ obit notes, he died “with one of his lifelong goals, universal health care, tantalizingly within reach yet struggling on Capitol Hill.” But his health-care agenda was broader than that, and in the past decade or so he helped push several significant health-related bills through Congress. Where you fall on the political spectrum will likely determine what you think of his health care legacy — his work increased government-backed health insurance coverage for children and seniors, and it added to regulation of health insurance and tobacco. He was an important negotiator on the

bill that added prescription drug benefits to Medicare, and he was a key force in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990. Kennedy pushed for years for the mental health parity bill that passed Congress last year, which says that mental health and substance abuse coverage offered by a health insurance plan must be on par with other coverage. And he was the Senate’s lead sponsor of a bill passed this year that empowers the FDA to regulate tobacco .

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Ted Kennedy’s Health Care Legacy