April 7th, 2008 at 12:11 am

Oops She Told Another Tall One

in: Election 2008, Health Care, Liberal MSM Bias, Libtards on Parade, Lunatic Lefties, News, Opinion, Presidential Candidates, Stupidity, socialism

Hillary Clinton must have a major detachment from the truth and reality.

She’s been using a story out of Athens, Ohio where supposedly a woman died after being refused treatment by a hospital because she didn’t have $100 to pay up front. First off, anyone with half a functioning brain cell knows that a hospital cannot refuse treatment based on ability to pay. And even if she has some $100 co-pay, they would not demand that payment up-front. But the story as it turns out is a total fabrication. The woman was insured and she was treated.

From the New York Times:

Over the last five weeks, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has featured in her campaign stump speeches the story of a health care horror: an uninsured pregnant woman who lost her baby and died herself after being denied care by an Ohio hospital because she could not come up with a $100 fee.

The woman, Trina Bachtel, did die last August, two weeks after her baby boy was stillborn at O’Bleness Memorial Hospital in Athens, Ohio. But hospital administrators said Friday that Ms. Bachtel was under the care of an obstetrics practice affiliated with the hospital, that she was never refused treatment and that she was, in fact, insured.

“We implore the Clinton campaign to immediately desist from repeating this story,” said Rick Castrop, chief executive officer of the O’Bleness Health System.

Linda M. Weiss, a spokeswoman for the not-for-profit hospital, said the Clinton campaign had never contacted the hospital to check the accuracy of the story, which Mrs. Clinton had first heard from a Meigs County, Ohio, sheriff’s deputy in late February.

A Clinton spokesman, Mo Elleithee, said candidates would frequently retell stories relayed to them, vetting them when possible. “In this case, we did try but were not able to fully vet it,” Mr. Elleithee said. “If the hospital claims it did not happen that way, we respect that.” emphasis mine

So why did the Sheriff’s Deputy tell Mrs. Clinton this fictitious story? Could it be that he didn’t have first hand knowledge of the incident? That’s where the smart money is.

Deputy Holman knew Ms. Bachtel’s story only secondhand, having learned it from close relatives of the woman. Ms. Bachtel’s relatives did not return phone calls Friday.

As Deputy Holman understood it, Ms. Bachtel had died of complications from a stillbirth after being turned away by a local hospital for her failure to pay $100 upfront.

“I mentioned this story to Senator Clinton, and she apparently took to it and liked it,” Deputy Holman said, “and one of her aides said she’d be using it at some rallies.”

Indeed, saying that the story haunted her, Mrs. Clinton repeatedly offered it as a dire example of a broken health care system. At one March rally in Wyoming, for instance, she referred to Ms. Bachtel, a 35-year-old who managed a Pizza Hut, as a young, uninsured minimum-wage worker, saying, “It hurts me that in our country, as rich and good of a country as we are, this young woman and her baby died because she couldn’t come up with $100 to see the doctor.”

Mrs. Clinton does not name Ms. Bachtel or the hospital in her speeches. As she tells it, the woman was turned away twice by a local hospital when she was experiencing difficulty with her pregnancy. “The hospital said, ‘Well, you don’t have insurance.’ She said, ‘No, I don’t.’ They said, ‘Well, we can’t see you until you give $100.’ She said, ‘Where am I going to get $100?’

“The next time she came back to the hospital, she came in an ambulance,” Mrs. Clinton continued. “She was in distress. The doctors and the nurses worked on her and couldn’t save the baby.”

Why would Mrs. Clinton tell such a falsehood without vetting the story? To sell her massively expensive government funded health care mandates.

Clinton is not interested in the truth, she is only interested in spending more and more taxpayer money in an effort to make you think that she is something that she isn’t. A good person.

The hospital’s reputation is being damaged all to sell Mrs. Clinton’s plan and they have a right to set the record straight.

Since Ms. Bachtel’s baby died at O’Bleness Memorial Hospital, the story implicitly and inaccurately accuses that hospital of turning her away, said Ms. Weiss, the spokeswoman for O’Bleness Memorial said. Instead, the O’Bleness health care system treated her, both at the hospital and at the affiliated River Rose Obstetrics and Gynecology practice, Ms. Weiss said.

The hospital would not provide details about the woman’s case, citing privacy concerns; she died two weeks after the stillbirth at a medical center in Columbus.

“We reviewed the medical and patient account records of this patient,” said Mr. Castrop, the health system’s chief executive. Any implication that the system was “involved in denying care is definitely not true.”

Although Mrs. Clinton has told the story repeatedly, it first came to the attention of the hospital after The Washington Post cited it as a staple of her stump speeches on Thursday. That brought it to the attention of The Daily Sentinel in Pomeroy, Ohio, which published an article on Friday.

Neither paper named the hospital or challenged Mrs. Clinton’s account.

Imagine that, 2 newspapers citing an inaccurate story without checking the validity of the sources and neither challenged the Clinton campaign about whether or not it vetted it before it recklessly repeated it over and over again. A lie told often enough becomes the truth. At least for anyone named Clinton anyway.

“I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”

“We had to dodge sniper fire”

What other tall ones are we in store for?

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    I wouldn’t call these Clintonisms ‘tall ones’. ‘Tall’ implies they eventually have a limit to their ludicrousness.

    Warning Max… Please read the Comment Policy. Since this comment is short and on topic, it will stand. But another violation of the Policy may result in deletion of your comment.

    Max Andrews on April 7th, 2008