Richard Parker: “No government regulations restricted the Senator in this extremely important personal choice. Facing a life threatening illness, no bureaucrat forced the Senator to chose his surgeon nor hospital from a government ‘approved’ list–a list not generated by Kennedy’s independent and free judgment, but by ‘public servants’ who’s expertise is not Kennedy’s life, but the arbitrary and byzantine politics of ‘pull’, of favors owed and collected, of political pressure groups and the bitter reality of healthcare rationing. No, Kennedy was not forced to sacrifice his life, liberty nor property in the name of the so-called ‘greater public good.'”