Barack Lied, Healthcare Died
During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama made a fibby about his mother's struggle with cancer, saying she spent the months before her death in 1995 fighting with insurance companies that were trying to deny her coverage for the treatment she needed. He told that story again and again, as President, during the national health care debate.
The truth came out in a biography about his mother, written by former NYT reporter Janny Scott. Byron York, of the Wash Ex, calls the biography "generally admiring," and goes on to say:
Scott, who had access to Dunham's correspondence from the time, reveals that Dunham unquestionably had health coverage. "Ann's compensation for her job in Jakarta had included health insurance, which covered most of the costs of her medical treatment," Scott writes. "Once she was back in Hawaii, the hospital billed her insurance company directly, leaving Ann to pay only the deductible and any uncovered expenses, which, she said, came to several hundred dollars a month."...A dozen years later, her son turned her ordeal into a campaign pitch for national health care. But the story Obama told, Scott writes, was "abbreviated" -- the abbreviation was to leave out the fact that Ann Dunham had health insurance that paid for her treatment. "Though he often suggested that she was denied health coverage because of a pre-existing condition," Scott writes, "it appears from her correspondence that she was only denied disability coverage."
via FoxNation
Reminds me of the guy who pretended to be a lesbionic Syrian: "While the narrative voice may have been fictional, the facts on this blog are true and not misleading as to the situation on the ground."
It's insane. How can we deal with people like this? When they're certain of, and concerned with, only their own righteousness? They don't believe in gravity; they don't believe in starlight; they don't believe in songbirds or law or medicine or anything beyond the parameters of their own ego... All they know is, they're right and you're wrong, and facts will not be allowed to interfere with their rhetoric.
Also, they're pretty sure that by spending your money, they can buy their way into Heaven. By being compassionate. With your money.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at July 13, 2011 1:30 AM
Remember, this administration is still urging banks to apply "less stringent underwriting criteria" to poor home-buyers. Like, NOW... In 2011.
Sophistimicated economists will tell you that default is inexcusable... But our government is a lost cause. These people are out of their minds, as are far too many of the taxpayers who support them.
If the government defaults, the results may well be horrific... But people aren't being paid for creating value anymore, and aren't being permitted to find the prices for the their remaining assets. Capitalism is broken.
Even if default brought us to some sort of renewed Dark Ages, it might well be an cleansing for the human project. We've got to think about what's going make things work in future centuries as well...
My favorite aphorism: Human nature is NOT in transition. It's the same as it was 2000 years ago, and as it will 2000 years from now. If people forget the disciplines required to make civilizations work, nature will remind us.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at July 13, 2011 1:40 AM
Wait. Obama Lied!?!?
No. I just CAN'T believe it!
He's seems like such an honest poltician...
Sabrina at July 13, 2011 5:16 AM
If people forget the disciplines required to make civilizations work, nature will remind us.
It ain't a pretty picture, is it? And they've already raised over $85 mil for his re-election campaign.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43737360/ns/politics-decision_2012/
I think I'm gonna be sick...
Flynne at July 13, 2011 5:52 AM
A man who would lie - repeatedly and purposefully - about his own mother's cancer to get elected, and yet we're supposed to think he's acting in good faith when negotiating spending cuts, tax increases, debt ceiling, etc?
Joe Wilson was right all along.
JDThompson at July 13, 2011 6:14 AM
"If people forget the disciplines required to make civilizations work, nature will remind us."
Crid, that's probably the single best sentence you've ever written here.
Cousin Dave at July 13, 2011 7:25 AM
What's crappy about this is that he could have easily found a *true* insurance company horror story among his constituents/supporters. It wouldn't have been that hard. Instead he trumped up his mother's experience when, in fact, with GROUP HEALTH COVERAGE, she was one of the "lucky" ones -- if someone with a terminal illness can ever be considered lucky. All he would have had to do was say, "Hey, can we get someone in the individual market who's having trouble getting a serious illness covered?" He would have had plenty of heart-breaking stories to choose from.
...But I guess using his mother as an example would have been deemed more powerful than another Joe the Plumber.
sofar at July 13, 2011 7:35 AM
We just got our annual premium increase for health insurance- it went up 29% this year. The thing is, like most who were already insured, our health plan is grandfathered in, so we get none of the benefits promised under the health care act.
Eric at July 13, 2011 7:58 AM
We have run out of other people's money. It matters not what we need, want or deserve.
MarkD at July 13, 2011 8:12 AM
So here's what happens:
1. Obama stops paying SS checks.
2. A gazillion little old ladies (& single mothers, etc.) race to the polls to elect some compassionate Democrats.
3. The Democrats continue their apeshit spending spree (Republicans assist).
4. We're still out of money, but the world blows up in Jan 2013 instead of Dec 2012.
5. What fucking difference does it make?
6. Where do they think money comes from?
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at July 13, 2011 8:20 AM
Fun tweet via McArdle.
These people are insane. They're not kind. They're not compassionate. They're not decent. They're insane.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at July 13, 2011 8:27 AM
Crid, you're right on all of it.
Amy Alkon at July 13, 2011 8:50 AM
And they've already raised over $85 mil for his re-election campaign.
That's also a bit of a falsehood. He's raised about $43 million, the DNC the rest. Not all of the total will go to his relection. They have a number of Senate seats up for election in '12, and most if not all will be contested.
We'll see how things are in a year, if those Senators want to be seen with him when he comes to their state to campaign, or if they flee from him.
I R A Darth Aggie at July 13, 2011 8:50 AM
6. Where do they think money comes from?
Obama's stash dude. He's got the fed printing presses to pay tha billz.
Sio at July 13, 2011 9:04 AM
You do get some of them, Eric. Even grandfathered plans have to comply with the elimination of lifetime limits and follow the 26-and-under rule -- things that, admittedly, they may have been doing already (although my private plan didn't). But you're right that grandfathered plans won't have to comply with a slew of other things like essential benefits, or the elimination cost-sharing for preventative care.
sofar at July 13, 2011 9:13 AM
Very succinct and well put.
The fact that fewer than 35% of American students are proficient in history would indicate that the number of Americans who truly understand what it takes to build and maintain a civilization is woefully low.
And, yet, you still have a roof over your head.
Home ownership advocates [deliberately] forget this. And "affordable housing" advocates deliberately mislead on this.
Home ownership may be the American dream, but it's not a right. It's not even in the Bill of Rights. Plenty about being secure in one's dwelling place, but nothing in there about home ownership.
Even Lord Coke never said anything about owning the castle, only about being secure in it.
They don't get paid to be kind, compassionate, or decent. Their job is to achieve high return rates for their fund, not to save civlization - and they've put blinders on to accomplish that task. If a plague hit the world tomorrow, they'd invest in body bags.
And we're the ones driving them to it.
People got so used to double-digit returns during the recent booms that they demanded them of all their investments...all the time. And any fund manager achieving merely single-digit returns was bounced, no matter how consistently and dependably he achieved these modest but positive returns.
People love to blame Wall Street for the housing bust. And there's plenty of blame to be apportioned to Wall Street. But save some blame for the folks who put off saving for forty years then saw retirement looming and demanded their entire retirement be funded by the short-term investments they were about to make. They are also to blame for Wall Street's spectacular "high returns and damn the long-term consequences" mortgage-backed security binges.
Holder may be (at least economically) the worst Attorney General we've ever had; taking that title easily from his old boss, Janet Reno.
When she went after banks, Reno didn't have direct evidence that persecuting banks would lead to permissive underwriting standards which would lead to unqualified borrowers which would lead to default and a collapse in the houseing market and a world-wide recession. Anyone with half a brain could have told her that, but there wasn't direct evidence of it.
Holder was there when it happened! He helped cause it! He saw the consequences! And now he's doing it again!
Conan the Grammarian at July 13, 2011 12:06 PM
What's crappy about this is that he could have easily found a *true* insurance company horror story among his constituents/supporters.
What's crappy about this story is that no member of our "adversarial" press bothered to fact-check this story, or anything else Obama said, during the campaign. In fact, we continue, to this day, to know almost nothing about the first 30 years of Obama's life. If we actually had a press that did it's job there's no way he would have been elected. Instead, they actively prevented us from knowing his background.
I once asked a journalist why no one bothered to investigate Obama's past. He said there was no need, we just had to read about it in his auto-biography!
DrMaturin at July 13, 2011 12:10 PM
> They don't get paid to be kind,
> compassionate, or decent.
No one does. I was speaking more of the political side of the machine. Sorry for not making that clear to you.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at July 13, 2011 1:04 PM
If you're a twitterhead, here's a good daily kiss on the lips.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at July 13, 2011 1:09 PM
Ah, "these people" being the politicians who are way too busy telling us how kind, compassionate, and decent they are [with the fruits our labor]. Got it.
Sorry about the misunderstanding.
"The louder he spoke of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"If a man speaks of his honor, make him pay cash." - Robert A. Heinlein
Conan the Grammarian at July 13, 2011 1:14 PM
Read your book, still a democrat...lol
Mo at July 13, 2011 2:34 PM
Verily: When participating with impenetrable stupidity, concision is thoughtful courtesy... Get in, get out, and nothing mo'.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at July 13, 2011 3:43 PM
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