Unbelievable update: The crappiest NYTimes column on Obamacare just got crappier; Update: Kristof’s disingenuous non-response
Scroll for updates…Kristof non-responds…holes remain…
Today, I did something that Pulitzer Prize-winning NYTimes columnist Nick Kristof apparently didn’t do: I talked to a spokesman at the Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, Oregon.
I called them up after OHSU’s Dr. Johnny Delashaw left a comment about Kristof’s piece spotlighting the horrible plight of John Brodniak, an Oregon man with a neurological condition that he says no one would treat.
Kristof used Brodniak’s plight to argue for universal health care, decry Brodniak’s deadly lack of insurance (even though he got Medicaid coverage in August), and lambaste doctors for refusing to treat Brodniak due to low reimbursements.
Well, OHSU confirmed for me two things:
1) OHSU is a safety-net hospital not far from where Brodniak lives. The hospital accepts all Medicaid patients and would not turn Brodniak away.
Okay, are you ready for Number 2?
2) Brodniak is a patient at OHSU — and has been a patient there for the past three weeks.
In other words, at the time Kristof’s article was published this past Sunday, Brodniak was already being treated and cared for by some of the best neurologists in the country!
The spokesman told me that the Brodniaks were willing to confirm “reluctantly” for me that he has been a patient there for nearly a month, but they refuse to talk to me directly. The spokesman also told me that OHSU will not make its doctors available for further comment on the matter.
Kristof’s readers have been raising money to pay for the Brodniaks to get him treated. But Brodniak is covered. He doesn’t have to pay a dime.
Will Kristof tell his readers the rest of the “horror story?” Or isn’t the whole truth fit to print in the Fishwrap of Record?
Here’s a screencap of his blog post promoting the column for posterity:
A reminder of the hysterical title of Kristof’s piece: “Are We Going To Let John Die?”
Er, why don’t you pose that question to the doctors who have been treating John Brodniak the past three weeks and tell your readers to stop bashing Joe Lieberman for opposing the Demcare public option?
***
Kristof’s readers and supporters continue to point to his column on Brodniak as the archetypal argument for Obamacare (scroll through the hundreds and hundreds of comments here).
So: John Brodniak, a man who already has government health insurance and is already being treated for his illness, is the New York Times’s poster boy for why we need a new, massive nationalized health care system in order to cover and treat more people like Brodniak…who is already covered and being treated.
Sorry, this Pulitzer Prize-level logic and journalism is giving me a headache.
***
Not that he’ll pay attention to non-Pulitzer Prize peons in the blogosphere, but I’m e-mailing the NYTimes ombudsman. You can, too: Here.
***
For the lazy MSM journalist who doesn’t want to click through the links to my original dissection of Kristof’s column, here were my main points:
…Kristof reports that Brodniak has been diagnosed with cavernous hemangioma. And more tragedy:
With John unable to work, he lost his job — and his insurance coverage. Esther had insurance for herself and for her two children (from a previous marriage) through her job building manufactured homes. But she couldn’t add John to her plan because of his pre-existing condition.
Without insurance, John has been unable to get surgery or even help managing the pain. When he collapses or suffers particularly excruciating headaches, Esther rushes him to the emergency room of one hospital or another, but an E.R. can’t do much for him. One hospital has told them not to come back unless he gets insurance, they say. That meant that the couple had no income — and no insurance for anyone in the family, including the children. Neighbors have helped, and a community program has paid the rent so that they are not homeless. But bills are piling up, and John and Esther don’t know how they will cope.
The column crescendos with a clarion, hysterical call to Congress to Do Something:
John’s story is not so unusual. A Harvard study, to be published next month in the American Journal of Public Health, suggests that almost 45,000 Americans die prematurely each year as a consequence of not having insurance. John may become one of them.
If a senator strolled indifferently by as John retched in pain, we would think that person pitiless. But isn’t it just as monstrous for politicians to avert their eyes, make excuses and deny coverage to innumerable Americans just like John?
Kristof follows up with a blog post on his column titled, “The Human Toll of our Health System.” The comments section is filled with doctor-bashing single-payer zealots bemoaning Brodniak’s case and heaping praise on Kristof for his brilliance. Kristof writes:
Read his story and see if you still think the need for universal coverage isn’t urgent. His story seems to me the best rebuttal of the skeptics.
Of course, my column doesn’t get into the issue of costs. They are a real issue, for universal health care is expensive. But as I’ve noted the annual cost of health reform and the annual cost of our Afghan deployment is about the same — except the former is paid for, while the latter isn’t.
How crappy is this piece? Let us count the ways:
1) Crappy journalism. Read through the column and you won’t find a single doctor, hospital official, or Oregon Medicaid official quoted. Did Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Kristof bother to try and confirm Brodniak’s medical condition with another source. Nope:
The doctors warn that pressure from the growth could lead a major blood vessel nearby to burst, killing him. “They tell me I’m a time bomb,” John said. With a touch of bitterness, he adds, “It sort of feels as if they’re playing for time to see if it bursts, to save them from doing anything.”
I’m not a physician, and I certainly can’t speak to the medical issues here. But I have examined John’s medical records, and they appear to confirm his story.
As for why Brodniak hasn’t been able to get the surgery he says he needs, all we have is this:
John says the principal obstacle to treatment appears to be simply his lack of insurance.
(empahsis added)
And why won’t any doctor do the surgery? All we have is what Brodniak told Kristof:
In August, he qualified for an Oregon Medicaid program, but he hasn’t been able to find a doctor who will accept him as a patient for surgery, apparently because the reimbursements are so low.
Deep investigative journalism there!
Would a New York Times editor ever allow a conservative columnist arguing against Obamacare to get away with this kind of sourcing?
I have contacted Oregon’s Medicaid office, by the way, for comment and response to Kristof.
2) Crappy emotionalism. The column leaves the tear-jerking impression that Brodniak is just inches away from dying for lack of health insurance — and that he is a shining example of why, in Kristof’s words, “universal coverage” is so “urgent.”
But, um, Kristof himself reports an inconvenient fact in his overwrought column: Brodniak has government health insurance! You read it in the sentence quoted above:
In August, he qualified for an Oregon Medicaid program…
So, the problem isn’t the absence of a government-run safety net. The problem is apparently too-low reimbursements in his case. But Kristof apparently didn’t seek any confirmation of Brodniak’s assertion that those considerations (a general problem in Oregon) were specifically at the heart of Brodniak’s apparent experience with denial of care.
And Kristof apparently is too busy gnashing his teeth about heartless politicians and greedy doctors to think about what Obamacare would actually do to solve what he and Brodniak assert is the underlying problem.
Let me help: Obamacare would slash government health care reimbursements, not raise them. Open any local newspaper and you’ll find a doctor decrying the proposed Democrat cuts, Sherlock. See also: 45% of doctors would consider quitting under Obamacare.
3) Crappy follow-up. Kristof leaves the distinct and dire impression that Brodniak’s wife and children were also cruelly left out in the cold — and that only “universal coverage” can save them all! But you may recall that Obama signed massive tobacco tax hikes into law to expand S-CHIP. Kristof doesn’t say whether Brodniak had applied for his children prior to gaining Medicaid coverage and if not, why not.
Kristof actually does hit on a very real problem that needs fixing: Dependence on employer-based health insurance. The GOP and conservatives have proposed alternatives to address this problem. Kristof is silent on the matter.
Too practical. Not human drama-inducing enough.
Reader Greg e-mails another unsolved mystery: “[I]f someone lost his insurance because he lost his job, why didn’t he qualify for COBRA coverage? It’s expensive, but if this condition is life threatening as Kristof claims, then John himself has apparently put a price tag on his own well being.”
4) Crappy hypocrisy. Kristof sounds the usual moonbat talking points in invoking the cost of the war in Afghanistan to justify shrugging at the costs of a government health care takeover.
He might be able to get away with this if had been a consistent opponent of the Afghanistan invasion from day one. But back when New York Times columnists backed the Afghanistan invasion in the months after the 9/11 attacks, Kristof argued passionately that the war wasn’t merely worth the cost — but was actually a net life-saver.
Remember?
A Merciful War
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: Friday, February 1, 2002One of the uncomfortable realities of the war on terrorism is that we Americans have killed many more people in Afghanistan than died in the attack on the World Trade Center.
Over the last couple of months I’ve tried to tabulate the Afghan death toll. My best guess is that we killed 8,000 to 12,000 Taliban fighters, along with about 1,000 Afghan civilians.
So what is the lesson of this? Is it that while pretending to take the high road, we have actually slaughtered more people than Osama bin Laden has? Or that military responses are unjustifiable because huge numbers of innocents inevitably are killed?
No, it’s just the opposite.
Our experience there demonstrates that troops can advance humanitarian goals just as much as doctors or aid workers can. By my calculations, our invasion of Afghanistan may end up saving one million lives over the next decade.
What happened to your cost-benefit calculator, Mr. Kristof?
5) Crappy junk science. Kristof ends his column by citing the bogus health statistic that won’t die. Let’s look again at the quote:
John’s story is not so unusual. A Harvard study, to be published next month in the American Journal of Public Health, suggests that almost 45,000 Americans die prematurely each year as a consequence of not having insurance. John may become one of them.
As I reported last month, the study was the work of dyed-in-the-wool single payer zealots who had no way of assessing whether the survey participants received insurance coverage between the time they answered the questionnaires and the time they died and no way of assessing whether the deaths could have been averted with health insurance coverage. A significant portion of those classified as “uninsured” may not have even been uninsured, based on past studies that actually did verify insurance status. But the agenda-driven researchers just took the rate of uninsurance from the original study (3.3 percent), applied it to census data, and voila: more than 44,000 Americans are dying from lack of insurance.
So, Kristof cites a junk science study to bolster his rallying cry on behalf of a man who might become the next casualty of lack of health insurance. Except that he does have health insurance and the current single-payer-friendly Democrat proposals on the table would do nothing to save Brodniak from death.
Pultizer Prize-level journalism from the Fishwrap of Record.
***
Pssst. NYTimes “opinion media monitor.” Are you there?
***
I’ve highlighted Kristof’s shoddy health reporting before.
See:
KRISTOF CITES DISCREDITED ABORTION STATISTICS
KRISTOF DEFENDS BOGUS ABORTION ANALYSIS
PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH, MR. KRISTOF
***
Hey, where’s that NYTimes “opinion media monitor” when you need him/her?! From NYT ombudsman Clark Hoyt’s September 26 column:
Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, agreed with me that the paper was “slow off the mark,” and blamed “insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio.” She and Bill Keller, the executive editor, said last week that they would now assign an editor to monitor opinion media and brief them frequently on bubbling controversies. Keller declined to identify the editor, saying he wanted to spare that person “a bombardment of e-mails and excoriation in the blogosphere.”
Despite what the critics think, Abramson said the problem was not liberal bias.
***
11:37pm Eastern Update: Well, Kristof can’t be bothered to respond to my Tweets directly — or to actually read anything I’ve written about his crappy column — but he did have time to add this update to his blog post tonight:
UPDATE 3: Several readers are asking about a Michelle Malkin account claiming that John was already receiving treatment at OHSU. John had one appointment there. He says he was told to give up, that they could not help him, and he was despairing when he told me about it; their version is different, that he was under “observation.” In any case, he says that after the column appeared, he suddenly got a series of phone calls from OHSU saying that they wanted to see him and could address his needs after all. In any case, it now appears that he will get treated, and other doctors are also offering him assistance.
I didn’t merely “claim” that Brodniak was being treated. The Brodniaks, through OHSU, informed me that John Brodniak has been a patient there for three weeks. Not “one appointment.” Not “under ‘observation.’” He has been a patient there for three weeks.
Note how, once again, Kristof relies solely on Brodniak’s accounts to him (“he says,” “he says,” “it now appears”).
“In any case, it now appears that he will get treated:” Complete disingenuousness.
He has been treated, Mr. Kristof. He was getting treated BEFORE you tried to make a federal case out of him not being treated.
Joe Wilson moment.
Before you start bashing the OHSU doctors, I remind you, Mr. Kristof, of your own words in your column:
“I’m not a physician, and I certainly can’t speak to the medical issues here.”
I remind you that there are also many other remaining holes in the story — see here.
Here’s a question: Brodniak claims the “closest E.R.” to him “told him not to come back.” Several readers who work in E.R.’s cite federal law prohibiting such behavior. Which hospital was it, and which personnel, told Brodniak that, Mr. Kristof?
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Another reason it is probably good I am not King…. there would be a LOT of “Off with his head!” going on in this mixed up nation.
Journalistic prose that tugs at the heartstrings and serves the proletariat can not be hindered by mere facts!
This is profoundly warped.
How is this not fraud? With Kristoff abetting it?
Does the left just not recognize fraud anymore?
What’s his column going to be on next week? How Jones, Mann, et. al., actually changed the data to make Gorebull warming less alarming to the public?
Believe nothing you read in those rags
Start with that and you should be ok
Michelle how about looking into officer Trevor Nettletons murder in Las Vegas
You want believe it
Apparently Kristoff caught wind of this and “updated” his article.
.
Ummm…they didn’t offer, they accepted him because he has Medicaid.
But award-winning NYT columnists are paid for the depth of their ideas, not for the drudgery of actual, ah, reporting.
Well, Michelle, you are a true journalist, after all.
NYT columnists are simply sycophant slaves for our Dear Leader.
Kristof does not think that he ever has to issue a correction. After all, he went to Hah vud. And he actually pronounces it that way!
It’s the new normal in journalism, otherwise known as the “fake but accurate” standard. (What’s my frequency, Kenneth?)
Are you sure he didn’t go to Sam Houston Institute of Technology?
Don’t you kind of miss ol’ Document Dan’s Ratherisms, in a bizarre kind of way.
His reporting had more holes in it than a 10 foot tea strainer. Or something.
Heh, imagine that.
I thought National Enquirer was bad; this rag is just as bad. When they can’t publish a story to fill the columns, they make one up and fill it with garbage to support their marxist views.
But he COULD have been without insurance and be dead today – that’s all you need to know, stop with the facts already…
may I humbly suggest that he return that Pulitzer….Thanks Michelle…again you are doing the job that the fringe media just can’t seem to do in any reasonable or honest fashion!! Kristoff obviously attended the liberal school of media where facts are irrelevant and unbiased ethical journalism is not taught nor even pondered.
Nick – you lie!
What about HIPAA? I’m surprised they even confirmed he was a patient there. Unless it involved the oldest trick in the book:
*Ring Ring*
Hello?
-Hi, can you transfer me to John Brodniak’s room, please?
Sure, here ya go.
These fools are starting to drool on themselves. Out of desperation they seem to be imploding and exploding at the same time. All are starting to see these trivial goons for what they are–naive, self-serving, insubstantial, and innocuous.
There is likely more facts in an Enquirer story on UFO’s than can be found in most editions of that rag.
Pulitzers, Emmys, Nobels…… snobs giving symbolic “awrards” to other snobs.
We’ll never see a retraction or an admission of error because for some reason, liberals just have to double down on stupid. How many have backed off their AGW stance?
Click on the link in the above sentence and read this:
Sounds to me like Kristof is saying that a blogger (you know those people who sit around in their pajamas and publish stuff that doesn’t have to go through the rigorous editing process that “journalism” does) was more instrumental in getting help for Brodniak than Kristof and the New York Times.
But even this update doesn’t pass the smell test. According to OHSU, Brodniak has been a patient there for 3 weeks, long before MM’s column.
Kristof can’t even get the attempted spin to work.
Now that we all know that Brodniak is getting treated, I wonder if he will return the money that Kristof’s readers have been raising. It’s OK with me if he keeps it. After all, if G-d hadn’t wanted those readers to be sheared, he wouldn’t have made them sheep.
Those in the press corpse that are just like Kristoff should forever more be referred to as:
Manchurian Journalists.
They will print/report/write about anything blindly as long as it fits their programming.
If it’s like Climategate, no printing/reporting/writing…just oblivious.
An excellent and very thorough exposé, Michelle!
Received in an email:
Many of us voted carefully, but many others got the “Pulletsurprise”.
So, in order to prevent more of these “incendents” from happening, we need to pass Obamacare NOW…..but nothing except taking in the dough to pay for it, goes into effect until 2014?
So according to the bogus 45,000 people dieing a year, another 180,000 people will die, before it goes into effect, even though it’s being slammed through in 2009?
Oh the humanity!
//
Sarge
Nice work of relentless investigative journalism!
On December 2nd, 2009 at 11:34 pm, Republicanvet said:
The problem is that for decades the Manchurians have been infiltrating every part of our society.
Now we have:
Manchurian Journalists
Manchurian Professors
Manchurian Scientists
Manchurian Judges
Manchurian Senators
Manchurian Representatives
Manchurian President
Manchurian Clergy (Jeremiah Wright, etc.)
Manchurian Officers in our Military
Manchurian Agents in the CIA & FBI
Manchurian “Community Organizers” in ACORN
Manchurian heads of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
Manchurian Directors on corporate Boards of Directors
Manchurian leaders at Goldman Sachs and elsewhere.
Manchurian Secretaries in the cabinet
Manchurian “Czars”
They are freaking everywhere.
They have worked for decades to build their “coalitions of power”.
Jesus lord, Mrs. Malkin! You have disected this crappy article like a dead frog. Great as always.
Oh Michelle, you crazy kid. Pulitzer prize winning journalists do not waste time on facts or vetting a story. It gets in the way of the meme. No Pulitzer for you.
…like a Manchurian version of the common cold…spreading everywhere, but much worse.
You could be right…but if they sued, they would open themselves up to discovery. Sunlight has a way of making the roaches run for cover.
Wait a second – the address to send money to is the guy’s regular mailing address.
This means people are sending checks DIRECTLY TO HIM.
Will there be ANY accountability?
Do you think he’ll declare this as income? What does the IRS say about this?
If he’s already getting treatment, isn’t this fraud?
I’m no trying to knock a sick guy, but Kristof sure seems like he’s taking his journalistic responsibility very lightly…
I’m pretty sure that 45,000 number will go away once the dollars start rolling in. Then the Dems can start talking about all the lives they are saving every years.
Additionally jsr – in the future when health care is cut, they will say cuts will kill people.
I do more research before I post a controversial comment on a blog. Must be the fact that my parents, a newspaper publisher and editor, taught me to know my facts before putting them in print. Journalism as we know it is dead and if Durbin and Feinstein have their way, citizen journalism will be gone too.
Kristof: Did I tell you about the single mom in Paducah who works six jobs and had gout, arthritis and salmonella? She died of complications arising from a cold sore. She told me her death could have been prevented had Obamacare been available. I wept for her.
swede said:
After cleaning up my desk and laughing at the same time I have to thank you for my morning laugh.
Kristof takes at face value the claim by Mr. Brodniak that the staff at OHSU told Brodniak “to give up”. Nobody at the OHSU talks to patients that way. They would be fired if they did. Notice that neither Brodniak or Kristof will state who the person was that supposedly made this cruel and sadistic remark to Brodniak. Was it a nurse? a doctor? an administrator? a technician? Kristof will not tell us because I suspect that he knows that nobody talked to Brodniak that way. But it fits into the way Kristof wants doctors and hospital employees to act. You see, doctors and nurses do not have the compassion and good heart that journalists like Nick Kristof have.
And by the way, did Kristof mention that he went to Hah Vud? Kristof’s view of the world is that he is part of an elite who went to Harvard and this gives him special insight and makes him better than people who merely attended a state college.
My 9 yes 9 Huskie puppies seem to like the paper……..They have been leaving little presents of appreciation….
excellent post again on this issue Michelle. State governments have worked on their health care forever. Nobody in this country goes without health care.
The only reason that ANYONE would be for the Obamacare legislation is based on lies from the left. I’m always amazed at the nerve and gall of this administration when they accuse others of ‘spreading false and misleading information’.
Without false and misleading information, nobody would consider the Obamacare legislation. The whole thing is a lie. But the cost is not. It’s going to cost generations of Americans a LOT more money that it would cost if they did nothing.
The saddest part is that this still won’t fix the MAIN PROBLEM of health care in that MEDICARE IS GOING BANKRUPT even with their stealing money from every paycheck of every American to pay for it.
If you don’t believe in God, there’s no need for all of that “thou shalt not bear false witness” stuff.
“Pulitzer Prize-winning” equals “crappy”. That is one award you will never get (nor should you seek), Michelle!
The NYTimes has gone from blurring the line between fact and fiction to actually erasing it.
Kristof is a joke, but like Obama, he believes his own BS.
Has anyone asked Dingy Harry if Tommy is still hanging around somewhere?
The NYTimes should hire Mike Barnicle. He is especially good at fabricating stories.
The MSM, both print and broadcast, ignore or downplay stories like Van Jones, ACORN, or Climategate and push agenda driven pieces like this, then wonder why readership/viewership is down.
Yes. That is exactly what their plan is. Create a GIGANTIC BUREACRACY THAT DOES WORSE WHAT WE ALREADY DO EXCEPTIONALLY WELL.
So in a bizarre way…… Mr. Brodniak IS the poster boy for the Dems socialist health care plan.
Kristof post this what looks like just a few mins ago. He omits the fact that Medicaid will cover the costs. Seem to me like he is still lying.
Michelle, Michelle! Please remember that all legitimate journalists get into their profession to “make a difference” in this world. Simply printing the truth does not make a difference unless it advances a progressive socialist political agenda. If Little Nicky just printed the truth he might as well write ad copy for some floyover-country rag. Jeez…
Both pulitzer and nobel are discredited awards in my estimation.
That “Update: 3″ was apparently added last night. Not a few minutes ago as I wrote.
Even so, I agree with MM’s take on it. The guy will not acknowledge the truth and he is still trying to squirm away from his words.
Facts, we don’t need no stinkin’ facts, we ain’t got no stinkin’ facts, we don’t got to show you no stinkin’ facts!!! As they say MM, you are peeing into the wind, for the NYT (fishwrap of record) the readers of this RAG are more LIBERAL then the NYT, and it’s “JOURNALISTS”…
The nyt printed lies…again….Jeeze but I am surprised …but it was printed…with real ink….so maybe…
From one of the links in Michelle’s post. Unbelievable. Its a far-right position to not murder a Down’s baby, or not tell your daughter to abort her baby? These people disgust me. What an absolute douchebag.
http://www.wtsp.com/news/watercooler/story.aspx?storyid=119151&catid=58
On December 2nd, 2009 at 8:02 pm,
Saw those five pukes in court yesterday. Will they be charged with a hate crime? Most likely not.
Been a tough year for cops here in Vegas.
A devastating dismantling of this liar’s column in the Toilet Paper of Record. Great job Michelle. I dont want to sound like a broken record, but it just shows once again how the msm, and lib politicians (correctly) count on the uber-stupidity of their voters to be fooled by crap like Kristof’s column.
Was it the University of Chicago? The VP of Unnecessary Duties and Senatorial Consort?
Michelle, I commend your exhaustive efforts, your diligence, your attention to detail, and your relentlessness in search of the truth. You are living proof that a Journalism degree is no pre-requisite to be a professional journalist.
You have gone to great lengths to explain the obvious: the New York Times is not a newspaper, but a propaganda organ. And its employees are not reporters and editors, but propagandists.
Although I already knew what time it was — i.e., Kristof is a lazy, lying sack of sh*t — thanks to witnessing your vivisection of him I now know how to build a watch!
Your thoroughness is a marvel to behold when contrasted with the purposeful sloppiness and deliberate dishonesty of those who would be our informational gatekeepers. If I were working in journalism today, you’d be my role model; as it is, you’ll just have to be my heroine.
Heh-heh. Though Madoff probably thinks the same thing…
Ya know, when I check the morning news I either have to laugh or punch sombody’s lights out. I go with the laugh.
Not a single fact right.
Did we confirm that Kristof actually got the spelling of this guy’s name correct? I mean we really can’t take anything for granted with this moron.
But, Kristof “feels” that the facts are right. And that is all that counts to these libtards…
Major OT
Whoever is trying to hijack my account can stop NOW! I’ve had 3 notices telling me someone is trying to reset my password.
Kristof even violated the New York Times own guidelines. The guidelines require that when a Times employee is writing a factual account of events, he or she is required to use the title “Mr. or Mrs. or Ms.”. Yet when Kristof writes about Brodniak, Kristof always refers to him as “John” and when he refers to the doctors or nurses, Kristof never refers to them by their first names. Kristof is simply trying to stack the decks and if Kristof has to violate his own newspaper’s guidelines, so be it. After all, Kristof went to Harvard and he will tell you that even if you ask him about the weather report.
The question Kristof ducks is whether Brodniak was receiving medical attention at the time Kristof wrote his “factual account” in which Kristof said Brodniak was not receiving medical attention. The answer seems clearly to be yes. Kristof omitted the fact that Brodniak was eligible for the medicaid program and was a patient at OCHS.
Now that Kristof has been proven to be a teller of tall tales, he can go back to writing columns about how a brilliant farm boy from Oregon is recognized by the admissions department at Harvard and the faculty at Harvard is equally wowed by the Kristof’s genious.
I notice update 3 is careful. If Kristof were right, he would have spewed nasty venom all over MM. You know he read her article, he is sweating this cause as a libtard, he would have spewed venom anyway if he thought he could get away with it. I think he is sweating a little. The NYT can’t afford to lose anymore readers, especially with the public’s mood against stimilus checks now…. I knew after we got the most inexperienced, ideological POTUS in history it would be entertaining, didn’t count on this much entertainment though.
Michelle,
I doubt that you, or any other Conservative man or woman author or writer will EVER receive a Pulitzer Prize.
In order to receive a Pulitzer Prize these days one must 1) Be a leftist, Socialist, Communist, Fifth Columnist, 2) A flat out liar who does not present the truth or take the time to gather the facts, and 3) Know the right people.
You are 1) A Conservative, ergo, you don’t qualify for those criteria entered in # 1. 2) You tell the truth, research, dig under every rock, tree, carpet, etc., to get at the truth, double check, triple check, dig under THAT, and report accurately and support your information with supporting evidence, names, dates, etc., unlike the lazy media elite who think they have a captive audience, a bunch of “Yes” men and women who, like little birdies swallow whatever their mommy and daddy birdies drop into their mouths, and 3) You are demonized by “The Right People” who, preemptively attack and dismiss you and your books, their content, your columns, etc. They don’t have the stomach for it, they don’t have the honesty for it, and their are disingenuous.
So, there are a few things i have learned over the past few years. Among them are …
* Having a degree from a famous school, or even an Ivy League School, such as Yale, Harvard, Stanford, University of Pennsylvania, etc., does not necessarily mean that the person who has that degree earned it, is smart, or knows what they hell the degree is supposed to indicate they learned. In that area, many of those degrees are in nonsense, not some serious avenue of study.
* Just because a person has been awarded a “Prize,” such as “The Nobel Peace Prize,” or “The Pulitzer Prize,” or “Grammy,” “Oscar,” “Tony,” etc., doe snot mean that they actually are that good, or actually earned the prize.
In many cases it is a matter of who you know and whose ass you kissed, and if the people awarding the prize like you, or if you have the same biases, and point of view, as they have.
So, Michelle Malkin, I find your reporting of the facts, your research, your writing skill, and your speaking skill to be superior to many, including many “award winners,” such as Kristof.
I have been a doctor for about 40 years. In that time I have never, ever seen a patient with a true need turned away from a hospital or refused treatment. Every effort is made to make sure that people are taken care of. That is the sole purpose of the social services department in any large medical center, and most small ones as well. Meadicaid can usually be obatined readily if the patient qualifies. But if they are part of the working poor, the doctor will meet with hospital administrators and work out something. Now are doctors happey about giving free care? Generally they feel good about the situation but the problem is that after you have done all this work for folks, they will turn around and sue you for any reason they can conceive. That is always in the back of your mind when you are dealing with these situations.
When I lived in the Former Soviet Union medical care was very difficult for people who didn’t have money. Of course, medical care was supposed to be “free.”
I remember running all over town one night trying to find medical equipment suitable for use on a new-born. The hospitals claimed they didn’t have the needed device but made it clear to the parent that a little something “on the side” (or “on the left” or “na levo” in Russian) would take care of the problem.
Fortunately, I had enough connections around town to find the required equipment to help save the child’s life. It took me all night running around town to make the connections but seeing the healthy baby a few weeks later made it all worth it.
This is the future of health care under “socialized medicine” in America if ObamaCare is forced upon us.
It cannot be over-emphasized how important this website is. Michelle is a brave and incredibly effective lady.
Which is why if ANYTHING needs to be reformed in health care, Tort Reform must be the first step.
I’ve experienced the bureaucracy there…it didn’t matter what level they were at…ALL hand their hand out.
Maybe this has already been stated previously…
The “Healthcare Reform” proposed by Congress has a penalty for those who have so-called “Cadillac” care plans. In effect, if your plan is better than your neighbor’s, you pay a penalty.
Does that mean that, our Elected Representatives, who opt out and are exempt from the “Healthcare Reform” that they are pushing, will have to pay a penalty, due to their own Congressional “American Royalty Cadillac Plan”?
Somehow, I doubt it.
Bastards.
And you thought Blago was a crook…
In Kristof’s latest column, he is defending the Taliban. Kristof says it is a lie that the Taliban ever prevented girls from attending school. Kristof says that the Taliban only wants to ensure that girls have own women as their teachers. Then Kristof is bragging about the Taliban are incorruptible and have the love of the people. But what the heck, Kristof went to Harvard so he must know better than anyone who did not go to Hah Vud. I can only imagine a Kristof conversation with his translator in Kabul trying to communicate with an Afghan citizen : “Please tell him that I went to Harvard and I work for the New York Times and I win many awards”. Translator to Afghan Citizen in Pahstun dialect: “Kristof can not understand me but he wants me to tell you that he is a famous American and he is smarter than anyone else and you should recognize him as such”.
Well, the truth is that if you look too deeply into something the story changes so much it isn’t a story anymore…….it’s the truth.