Obama lied about a central fact about his own life which he used — powerfully — to push health care reform

“For my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in a hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a preexisting condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.

~Barack Obama

Ann Althouse
Althouse
7/14/2011

“Book Challenges Obama on Mother’s Deathbed Fight,” says the NYT, which, of course, isn’t generally inclined to cast unnecessary aspersions on this President. “Lied” is my paraphrasing. The NYT wrote “mischaracterized.”

During his presidential campaign and subsequent battle over a health care law, Mr. Obama quieted crowds with the story of his mother’s fight with her insurer over whether her cancer was a pre-existing condition that disqualified her from coverage.

In offering the story as an argument for ending pre-existing condition exclusions by health insurers, the president left the clear impression that his mother’s fight was over health benefits for medical expenses.

But in “A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother,” author Janny Scott quotes from correspondence from the president’s mother to assert that the 1995 dispute concerned a Cigna disability insurance policy and that her actual health insurer had apparently reimbursed most of her medical expenses without argument….

…I don’t accept that the President could have an innocently false memory about this story, which he milked dramatically, as Byron York describes here

The article continues at Althouse.com

In the comments section Pogo writes, “Gore used his sister’s death from lung cancer and his son’s accident in the same way… ‘Hospital staffers who witnessed the behind-the-scenes maneuvering were “appalled” at what seemed to be Gore’s calculating behavior in the middle of a heart-rending family crisis — behavior that would show up again later in his political life, fitting into a pattern.’ ”  Read the whole thing.

At GlennBeck.com, Obama caught in a massive lie, exposed by yet another author, Scott Wright.

…“There is something fundamentally wrong about that.  It’s a lie,” Pat said. “Her insurance company covered her completely for the problem that she was suffering.”

“That is weird.  According now to the records in January 1995, she left Indonesia to go to Honolulu where she was diagnosed with an advanced uterine and ovarian cancer.  She began a regimen of surgery and chemotherapy…”

…Glenn emphasized that she came from another country to the United States and received her medical care. Pat added that she was actually misdiagnosed in Indonesia, where she was said to have appendicitis.

“ Once she was back in Hawaii, the hospital billed her insurance company directly leaving Ann only to pay the deductible and any uncovered expenses, which she said claimed to be several hundred dollars a month.  Scott Wright said Dunham, who wanted to be compensated for those costs as well as for her living expenses.  She filed a separate claim under her employer’s disability insurance policy.  It was that claim with the insurance company Cigna that was declined in August 1995 because as Cigna investigators said, her condition was known before she was covered by the policy.  Dunham protested the decision and informed Cigna that she was turning the case over to my son, an attorney, Barack Obama.  Cigna did not budge,” Glenn continued.

“September 1995 Dunham traveled to New York for an evaluation at renowned Memorial Sloan‑Kettering.  She returned to Hawaii, began a new course of treatment.  She died in November.  A dozen years later her son turned ordeal into a campaign pitch for national healthcare.  But the story Obama told Scott Wright was abbreviated.  The abbreviation was to leave out the fact that she had health insurance and it paid for her treatment.  Though he often suggested that she was denied health coverage because of a preexisting condition.  It appears from her correspondence in her own writing that she was only denied disability coverage.  That’s a different story altogether but one that nobody in the press seems to care.”…

Read the complete article at GlennBeck.com

Read also, Obama Lied, Liberty Died

Update: Paul Ryan Takes on Obamacare and IPAB An excellent video clip from yesterday’s hearings…

Update 2: The Times—and the White House— tackle the story of his mother’s fight with insurance companies

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