It turns out Hillary's Health Insurance story is true

[notundecided]

The woman in question had no insurance, & had run up unpaid bills at a clinic. She went back to the clinic when she got pregnant and they wanted
100$ upfront or they wouldn't treat her.

The hospital that denied the story was never accused of denying services, but decided to get involved anyway.

Here's the link:http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/4/7/185232/6110

[Liquorice]

1. That doesn't surprise me at all. Hillary Clinton is not a liar. nt

[StevieM]

13. Agreed. The campaign of personal destruction that has been waged against her is

reprehensible. But in this case, it is probably too late. The damage is done.

Steve

[AX10]

14. kick

If she's not the nominee, I'll write her in.

[Bigleaf]

17. She's not? Did you just return from a tropical vacation where you had no access to any media?

She told a little white lie while you were away about being under sniper fire. Google it.

[Hepburn]

21. Yeah, right.....

....the vids of the sniper fire in Tuzla proves that Little Hilly never lies.

:rofl:

[cbayer]

2. Great example of what is going on here.

MSM runs a story to swiftboat a candidate.

Candidate's supporters eat it up with a spoon and spew it everywhere without ever verifying the information (and oh the irony of those who screamed "She didn't verify it!!!!" from those that didn't verify anything for themselves).

It's a pathetic thing, really.

[tekisui]

22. This one is a reach.

There a hundreds of stories like this one, whether or not it is line by line true. This story happens again and again.

Nothing to get worked up about. This nor the bookbag shit means anything.

[cbayer]

24. I agree with you, tekisui.

That's why I think it was so shameful the way some people used this as a weapon without having any evidence of whether it was true or not.

These stories are all just stories. This story in particular does happen all the time and needs to be told.

But even the whiff of a possible inconsistency brought out the rabid attack dogs.

I would feel the same had it been done to Obama. I'm just sick to death of some of the people on this board.

[Beaverhausen]

3. your link isn't working

I think

edit- OK the link is OK it's just not "live"

[Pawel K]

4. I wish this was really a lie

how can something so terrible happen in this country in the 21st century?

[KaptBunnyPants]

5. I'm not a supporter, but this story is 100% believable to me.

I said the day the story broke, we've got homeless patients in need of medical care being dumped on the streets by cash strapped hospitals. Our healthcare system is broken, and it's murdering people everyday. Mostly poor people, who ought to count as much as anyone else when it comes to the value of their life, but increasingly the middle class as well.

[OzarkDem]

6. But the smear against Clinton has worked its magic

as it has done to so many other Dem candidates before...

[nichomachus]

7. OK -- everyone take a real deep breath.

Before throwing around terms like "lies" and "smears" and "switfboating."

Hillary told a story as gospel truth, when, by her campaign's own admission they hadn't been able to check it out.

It turns out that the story was partly true and partly not.

However, as anyone who has ever worked for a newspaper can tell you, this kind of sloppy reporting is fatal. It opens you to the charge, as it did to Hillary, that you're making things up. This is why a good reporter or editor will sit on a story that hasn't been checked out.

It's all about credibility. Hillary should not have told a story about real people, especially when the family's wounds hadn't yet healed, that hadn't been checked out 10 different ways to make sure it was absolutely true the way she was telling it -- and without making sure the family wasn't going to be pissed off for being dragged into the campaign.

So, in the end, it's not about "lying" or "smearing" or "swiftboating," but about sloppiness in the campaign. She has severely damaged her credibility, and has done it several times. Once that sets in, it starts to take on a life of its own.

Again, it's a sign of poor political instincts -- like the grin-and-wave at the Martin Luther King assassination site.

[Skip Intro]

8. If Hillary cured cancer, some here would fault her for it.

[dsc]

9. yeah I can even write the thread titles

Hillary increases heart disease.

Cure for cancer tastes like shit, and it only works 90% of the time.

Hillary threatens to increase overpopulation.

[Skip Intro]

10. Funny, and sadly true.

Anotehr one:

She wants to destroy the Democratic party by saving republicans!

[Clintonista2]

11. Hillary wants mandatory cancer elimination! She doesnt give us any choice! Waaah!

[nichomachus]

20. You might want to check your "victimhood" at the door n/t

[cbayer]

25. You may want to check your victimizing at the door. nt.

[nichomachus]

41. Please explain how I "victimized" anyone.

Details please

[Skip Intro]

26. OT question: Why is your profile hidden?

And thanks for the advice.

[nichomachus]

40. Have no idea about profiles - hidden or ottherwise -- sorry

[SwampG8r]

35. here is how the rest of the world sees this lying harridan

This made my morning!

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/opinion/article3...

Mark Steel: You couldn't make it up (unless you're Hillary, that is)
Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Traditionally, Democrat candidates for President start slightly radical, then try to reassure Conservative America, get in a tangle and look like idiots. But this time may be different, because Barack Obama has stuck by his friend the militant preacher, refusing to disown him, and Hillary Clinton has gone mental.

Her response to being caught lying to a military audience, when she invented a story about being under sniper fire in Bosnia, was to say it wasn't surprising she got some things wrong, seeing how she spoke millions of words every day. What a magnificent idea, that if you say lots of words some of them are bound to be fantastic lies. So if you listen carefully to horse-racing commentators they say things like "And it's Teddy's Boy still leading three furlongs out as they come up to the fourth last fence with Nip and Tuck two lengths behind by the way I fought a tiger once, punched it clean out and they're all safely over."

And auctioneers say, "Three-fifty, three-sixty, three-seventy, three-seventy man in the hat three-eighty here, my dad invented cornflakes, going once going twice, and magnets, he invented them straight up – gone."

Anyone can make a mistake about what happened on a trip, she said, and she's right. You might forget the name of the couple you met on the beach, or whether Thursday was the day you came under sustained mortar attack and had to dive behind sandbags and shoot your way out to safety, or was it the day you went to the dolphinarium.

This wasn't just a politician's lie, it was the pointless lie of someone who sits on their own in pubs and leans across to grab you and lie compulsively. Her next round of soft-focus adverts will probably feature her soothingly saying, "My fellow Americans, I drank a pint of walrus milk once for a bet. I speak fluent Eskimo. I once ate all the gherkins in Belgium. My brother's got a yak in his loft. I fell asleep on a night bus once and woke up in Munich, and had to get a lift back on a camel. I used to live on an iceberg. I've got a waffle-maker that works underwater."

If she became President it would be brilliant, as she stood on the White House lawn before the world's press and said, "I would like to thank the King of Morocco for his thoughtful remarks, and would add that I used to play professional darts. I went to a party once that went on for three weeks without stopping, and there was so many people dancing that the floor collapsed and we all landed downstairs which turned out to be an off-licence so it went on for another month."

Presumably she thought the sniper fire story would impress the audience of soldiers. So her campaign team should book her in to speak to other professions to see what she comes out with. If she addresses lumberjacks she'll start, "Hey, that's a tough job you folks do. And I should know because I once spent two days dangling from a cedar tree. Then my chainsaw slipped and sawed me down the middle, but luckily my right half put my left half in a nearby freezer that kept it fresh until the doctor arrived to sew me back together. But hey, let's turn to the economy."

Maybe it's part of a pact. Her husband only seems reasonable now because the idiot that followed him is so much worse. So to even things up, as president she'll talk such twaddle that in a couple of years people start pining for Bush.

Because someone who routinely lies like she does, then dismisses it as a consequence of the number of words she says has severe psychological problems. Perhaps her disorder is a result of the sort of politician she is. Like Blair, neither she nor Bill stand for anything – priding themselves in being tied to no "ideology". So a normal politician might set out with a set of principles, then lie as they compromise and betray them. But a Blair or Clinton is a politician with no purpose but their own standing, like celebrities who are nothing but celebrities. So they say whatever they feel will make them look best to the audience they're with, regardless of whether it's true, until they probably don't know themselves what's real and what's not.

And the daft thing with Hillary is her real life is ridiculous enough. So when she ends up in a home, muttering "I've got the biggest peanut in the world. I sang backing vocals on 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'. I went right along the Great Wall of China in a wheelbarrow," the nurses will say "Poor old thing. This morning she was jibbering that her husband was president and had affairs in the back room and denied it but got caught cos he sploshed on an intern's dress. She's getting worse isn't she, it's such a shame.

[Crunchy Frog]

16. I want to K&R this post.

:hi:

[QC]

12. The truth doesn't matter.

The point is to trash HRC, to give her the Gore 2000 treatment, and the story worked very well in that regard.

[AX10]

15. And this time, the left wing of the party has joined the right wing...

in the trashing. Sad.

[hollowdweller]

18. Not a Hillary supporter here but I'm glad it was affirmed she was correct

I think the the whole primary thing is veering off into too many side issues.

[LittleClarkie]

19. She mucked up the details on an actual story

The woman didn't have insurance at the beginning of the story, was in debt to the hospital, but got health insurance before she died. But the hospital she was in debt to wouldn't help her without a deposit.

The wrong hospital got identified with the story, and it was the wrong one.

She's got to watch these things. Learn from Gore in 2000. One little slip and they'll call you a liar.

[juajen]

37. She named no hospital, and did not name any of the people

affected, not even the woman who died. Why don't you get your facts straight?

[Mezzo]

23. it's her fault anyway. somehow. just wait. nt

[rodeodance]

27. WPOST:Clinton Told True Tale of Woe, Says Kin

This is the SAME Kornblut who did the hit smear job on
Hillary a few days ago.



Clinton Told True Tale of Woe, Says Kin

By Anne E. Kornblut

The aunt of a young pregnant woman who died after a hospital told her she needed to pay $100 up front for care said in an interview on Monday that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has been telling the story accurately on the campaign trail -- following claims by a different Ohio hospital that it did not turn the patient away.

For weeks, Clinton repeated an anecdote she heard in Ohio on Feb. 28 involving a young woman who lost her baby and later died because she lacked health insurance and did not have $100 to gain access to a nearby hospital.

But over the weekend, Clinton came under fire when officials at O'Bleness Memorial Hospital, after reading about her remarks, demanded that she stop recounting it because the patient, Trina Bechtel, was admitted there and did have insurance.

That part, it turns out, is true. But so is Clinton's claim that Bechtel did not get care at another hospital that wanted a $100 pre-payment before seeing her, according to the young woman's aunt, Lisa Casto. "It's a true story," said Casto, 53.

Casto added some details that were not part -- or differed from -- the Clinton anecdote: She said her niece had previously been in debt to a local hospital that later sent her a letter informing her that she could only be treated there in the future if she gave them a $100 deposit. At the time she went into debt to that hospital, Casto said, Bechtel was uninsured, though she later obtained health insurance and was insured at the time of her death.

Casto said she did not want to give the name of the offending hospital because the flood of calls over the incident has overwhelmed her and Meigs County deputy sheriff Bryan Holman, a friend of hers who retold the story to Clinton when she campaigned in southern Ohio.

(more...)

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/04/07/clinton_told_true_tale_of_woe.html gton

[rodeodance]

28. REC

[DeepModem Mom]

29. K&R

[Kaleva]

30. there are differences in the story

Your statement:

"The woman in question had no insurance, & had run up unpaid bills at a clinic. She went back to the clinic when she got pregnant and they wanted
100$ upfront or they wouldn't treat her."

Which is similiar to the version given by Hillary in her speeches:

"She got pregnant, she started having problems. There's no hospital left in Meigs County, so she had to go to a neighboring county. She showed up, and the hospital said, 'You know, you've got to give us $100 before we can see you.' She didn't have $100," Clinton said.

"So the young woman went back home," she continued. "The next time she went back, she was in an ambulance. It turned out she lost the baby. She was airlifted to Columbus."

A snippet from the WP article:

"Casto added some details that were not part -- or differed from -- the Clinton anecdote: She said her niece had previously been in debt to a local hospital that later sent her a letter informing her that she could only be treated there in the future if she gave them a $100 deposit. At the time she went into debt to that hospital, Casto said, Bechtel was uninsured, though she later obtained health insurance and was insured at the time of her death....

Casto said her niece, who suffered from preeclampsia during her pregnancy, did not seek care at the first hospital she when she fell ill because she knew she did not have the $100 out-of-pocket she believed she would need to be seen. Instead, she went to O'Bleness Memorial Hospital, where her baby was stillborn. Bechtel was later flown to Columbus and died there. She was 35."

[Sinistrous]

32. Interesting. The pregnant woman never actually WENT to the hospital

that wanted the $100. She never presented herself to that hospital and was not denied care by them because she never asked for care there.

[ORDem]

31. Nope, she got it wrong and didn't bother to vet the story and there are

so many other valid stories out there. The hospital DID NOT refuse treatment to that woman as Hillary said. It was a clinic that refused. The woman could have gone to any emergency room and received treatment without paying (that's the U.S.'s pathetic excuse for universal coverage). The story in the first place was a piss poor example of what's wrong with the system, and Hillary got the details all wrong and didn't care enough to check it out. She just wanted a tear-jerker in her stump speech.

:nopity:

[Bensthename]

33. I knew it.. I told you she never lies.

[jobycom]

34. You know what makes me sick to my stomach about those who bashed Clinton on this?

This is the story of how a woman was turned away from a hospital for lack of health insurance. Because of this, her baby died, and then the mother died.

Couldn't we have buried our disagreements to get behind this tragic story? Couldn't we all see this as proof that we need a national health care system, rather than some of us simply seeing it as another way to slander a rival? Couldn't we at least have withheld judgement until all the facts were in, rather than simply taking the word of a hospital PR firm trying to save it's neck that Clinton was lying?

Apparently, no we can't.

November will be a bad month for us, if this is the best we can do. Some people want to win so badly they've forgotten why they want to win.

[Kaleva]

36. If one reads the WP article;

the young woman wasn't turned away from any hospital for lack of health insurance. She had health insurance at the time she became ill.

[QC]

38. A couple of corpses is a small price to pay to destroy the monster!

:sarcasm:

[dkf]

39. Hillary's story was wrong. The girl had health insurance...look it up.

[Barack_America]

42. Unfortunate timing for Hillary...

There was truth to her story (I hesitate from calling it "true" and I still think she should have gotten the family's permission)...but anyhow, the only thing that will be getting much attention today is Iraq. So, in the end, the impression that will be left is yesterday's story.

[PBS Poll-435]

43. A lie travels half way around the world before the truth gets out the door

It is the same tactic the media used with Gore & Kerry.

[SeaLyons]

44. Hillary is NOT a liar....

Just another example of how quick the media jumps on anything and assumes it will be another hit against her.

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/4/7/13263/90098

The video says it all.

Go Hillary!!!

[Bolo Boffin]

45. She wasn't a liar anyway. She was repeating a story told to her. n/t