The expanding catalogue of Obamacare fables
The expanding catalogue of Obamacare fables
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011
Is there a health insurance horror story disseminated by the White House and its allies that ever turned out to be true? Obamacare advocates have exercised more artistic license than a convention of Photoshoppers. Now, a prominent sob story shilled by President Obama himself about his own mother is in doubt. It’s high past time to call their bluffs.
The tall-tale-teller-in-chief cited mom Stanley Ann Dunham’s deathbed fight with her insurer several times over the years to support his successful push to ban pre-existing condition exclusions by insurers. In a typical recounting, Obama shared his personalized trauma during a 2008 debate: “For my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.”
But there was something fundamentally wrong with Obama’s story. In a recently published biography of Obama’s mother, author and New York Times reporter Janny Scott discovered that Dunham’s health insurer had in fact reimbursed her medical expenses with nary an objection. The actual coverage dispute centered on a separate disability insurance policy.
Channeling document forger Dan Rather’s “fake, but accurate” defense, a White House spokesman insisted to the Times that the anecdote somehow still “speaks powerfully to the impact of pre-existing condition limits on insurance protection from health care costs” — even though Dunham’s primary health insurer did everything it was supposed to do and met all its contractual obligations.
No matter. Expanding government control over health care means never having to say you’re sorry for impugning private insurers. Democrats have dragged every available human shield into the contentious debate over Obama’s federal takeover of health care. Personal anecdotes of dying family members battling evil insurance execs deflect attention from the cost, constitutionality and liberty-curtailing consequences of the law. The president’s Dunham sham-ecdote is just the latest entry in an ever-expanding catalogue of Obamacare fables:
– Otto Raddatz. In 2009, Obama publicized the plight of this Illinois cancer patient, who supposedly died after he was dropped from his Fortis/Assurant Health insurance plan when his insurer discovered an unreported gallstone the patient hadn’t known about. The truth? He got the treatment he needed in 2005 and lived for nearly four more years.
– Robin Beaton. Also in 2009, Obama claimed Beaton — a breast cancer patient — lost her insurance after “she forgot to declare a case of acne.” In fact, she failed to disclose a previous heart condition and did not list her weight accurately, but had her insurance restored anyway after intense public lobbying.
– John Brodniak. A 23-year-old unemployed Oregon sawmill worker, Brodniak’s health woes were spotlighted by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof as a textbook argument for Obamacare. Brodniak was reportedly diagnosed with cavernous hemangioma, a neurological condition, and was allegedly turned away by emergency room doctors. Kristof called the case “monstrous” and decried opponents of Democrats’ health care proposals as heartless murderers. The truth? Brodniak not only had coverage through Oregon’s Medicaid program, but was also a neurology patient at the prestigious Oregon Health and Science University in Portland (a safety-net institution that accepts all Medicaid patients). Kristof never retracted the legend.
– Marcelas Owens. An 11-year-old boy from Seattle, Owens took a coveted spot next to the president in March 2010 when Obamacare was signed into law. Owens’ 27-year-old mother, Tiffany, died of pulmonary hypertension. The family said the single mother of three lost her job as a fast-food manager and lost her insurance. She died in 2007 after receiving emergency care and treatment throughout her illness. Progressive groups (for whom Marcelas’ relatives worked) dubbed Marcelas an “insurance abuse survivor.” But there wasn’t a shred of evidence that any insurer had “abused” the boy or his mom. Further, Washington State already offered a plethora of existing government assistance programs to laid-off and unemployed workers like Marcelas’ mom. The family and its p.r. agents never explained why she didn’t enroll.
– Natoma Canfield. The White House made the Ohio cancer patient a poster child for Obamacare in 2010 after she wrote a letter complaining about skyrocketing premiums and the prospect of losing her home. After Obama gave Canfield a shout-out at a health care rally in Strongsville, Ohio, and promised to control costs, officials at the renowned Cleveland Clinic, which is treating her, made clear that they would “not put a lien on her home” and that she was eligible for a wide variety of state aid and private charity care.
Since Obamacare passed, the amount workers pay in health care premiums has soared an average of nearly 14 percent; thousands of businesses have sought waivers in search of relief from the law’s onerous mandates; medical device makers have slashed jobs and research; and the private individual health insurance market is in critical condition.
Post-Obamacare truth is bloodier than pro-Obamacare fiction.
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Michelle Malkin, doing the fact checking the MSM refuses to do.
The Sock Puppet is a construct and was a construct – I woild like to look behind the curtain and see who assembled Barkey.
Just like the lie that gov is the answer and it will take care of you.
Brilliant ! I am so going to use that (with credit of course).
Can anything a leftist says in the quest for more control be believed?
We must always remember, liberals lie. Period. When they speak, even “a”, “and” and “the” is a lie.
Let’s not sugar coat it. It’s “The expanding catalogue of Obamacare Lies”. We’ve all known it from day 1.
A – Medicare has the highest rate of rejection .
B- You can’t sue the Government !
C- What are the Death panels FOR , to refuse CARE !
If oBowMa’s purple lips are a move’n, you can bet, lie’s are a spewing…..
“WORK”—————–The fleebegging liberal parasites new “N” word.
They were able to lie so much about this health care bill because they know nothing about how the industry works. This allowed them to easily and convincingly belt out talking points that had been tested for effectiveness among equally ignorant public.
You’d be amazed the questions I get about health care all day long. People don’t even know what deductible or pre-existing condition means.
The big issue was not being able to cover people with illnesses as individuals. If you get insurance through an employer, you can have AIDS, cancer, anything and you get the coverage. The only people who did not get coverage were people in the individual market – which is only 20% of the entire market of INSURED Americans.
They didn’t fix any problem. They just made more rules that ensured the government would both need and spend more money based on any arbitrary issue that elected officials wanted to campaign on.
MM said:
Oh Lord, too funny! That’s held at the Taj Mahal right?
That he would lie is not a problem for the Left and their toadies in the media: “a lie is the truth if it serves the revolution” is an adage as old as socialism itself. To our enemies his lies are to be admired as long as they ad to the tearing down of this country and it’s people. Fundamentally Transform America?
==
The Right to Keep and Bear Arms–>Constitutional Carry
It is a RIGHT-not a license from “our betters”.
Odd how the Conservative media rightly points out the lies of Obama and his regime….except when it comes to his fully documented by at least 8 nationally know experts forged long form BC, and other such “unimportant” things, where they remain strangely silent.
The charade continues unabated and the slow agonizing death of America continues.
Why?
The real question is this. Does this fraud EVER tell the truth?
Isn’t that SOP for Big-Government types? Never let a crisis go to waste, even if you have to manufacture the crisis out of whole cloth.
Fear is a great way to anesthetize people to the loss of their freedoms.
MM said: ( John Brodniak Update link! )
( Emphasis mine )
Well of course they won’t talk to you MM. Quite obviously they’ve been told to keep their mouths shut! “Your son is doing a great service to this country. True.., he could have easily gotten this level of care simply by filling out a form but just think of all the ‘good’ he is doing?”
We can only hope Kristof’s chummy relationship w/ Brangelina was worth it?
it might take less time to study when liberals tell the truth, one second might even be too much time, since they never tell the truth. you could spend a lifetime finding liberal lies, and the day you die, yet more will pop up.
Anyone with a calculator should know that you can’t take 30 million more bites out of the pie without making the pie a lot larger unless you are Jesus multiplying loaves and fishes. That is the problem, this idiot president THINKS he is THE MESSIAH. I can spend 1 trillion more per year than Bush did, and pick it from the bushes in my back yard, because I am Barrack Hussein Obama. MMMMM, MMMMM, MMMMM.
It is stunningly amazing to watch this debacle unfold. Barky’s legacy will eventually rest on the dungheap of human non-achievement. And the really curious thing is that he doesn’t seem to care – his “tear down of America” agenda supercedes all else.
” Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act. —- George Orwell”
It is truly sad that the President of the United States, the person we chose to lead our country and its people turns out to be so filled with lies that he can’t distinguish what is truth any more. He doesn’t bother to check facts, he uses whatever story sounds good to get his agenda pushed through. And he is so egotistical he thinks he will get away with it. I have news for this weasel…we know he is lying as soon as he opens his mouth. The game is up.
And by the way, we now have read the obama deathcare bill, we now know what is in the obama deathcare bill, and it is now time to repeal the freakin’ thing!!
Obviously, people have forgotten Y2K, TARP, the Porkulus bill, QE1, QE2, and a possible QE3 (It’s like Freddy Kruger ad infinitum) and now the debt ceiling!!!
There is ALWAYS a crisis and crisis creation/management isn’t a way to run a government. It won’t work indefinitely.
Back on topic, if the elected tormentors really want to cut the spending, killing and defunding Obama(doesn’t)care would go a LONG way in reducing the debt!! DO IT, DO IT, DO IT DAMN IT!!
Oh Wait!… sorry the topic was basically O’Mulligan is a liar… I knew that when he was campaigning in 2006 and he has been lying and campaigning for the last 5 years. That’s NOT news… COME ON 2012!
Catalog.., dungheap either way? What I’m sure I’m not alone in understanding is, why did they find it somehow necessary to fabricate and then hype these tall tales?
Aren’t their bonafide accounts of actual American Citizens that have fallen through the health care cracks without having to resort to promoting urban myths? I just don’t get it.
Update: Photoshoppers Convention to be held on Mars! Any time is fine.
MSM is this White House’s biggest propaganda machine.
Now on the other hand it was and is Bush’s and the Republicans worst enemy.
Let’s just rename the friggin’ law to what it should be:
“OsamaCare“.
Destruction of the US is the goal, after all. And it’s working.
Look at it this way, if liberals were to tell the truth about their agenda and ‘end game’, NO ONE educated outside the indoctrination centers that pass as public schools would buy into their crap.
They rely on lies, misdirections, obfuscation and plain old trickery to confuse and confound poorly educated people. Have you ever watched a magician and tried to figure out how he does things? There are two ways to do that… the educated way is to carefully watch each and every move and mentally catalog them. The indoctrinated way is to just sit back, watch the show and be entertained without critical thinking.
Sorry if I offended any indoctrinated public schoolers. I’m forming an organization called POOP (People Offended by Offended People) for the ones that would be offended by the offended indoctrinated public schoolers if there is anyone interested.
It won’t cost you a dime, just send me $5.00.
It’s the MO of the political demagogue. No further explanation required.
Sorry scrappy, I couldn’t let that slide…
Obama’s political speech “stories” are much like his undocumented past….all fiction. His base will believe anything he says, even when it’s pure fiction.
Errah, Pinnochio would pinch off a lincoln log in his drawers if he knew he could get away with this!
Errah I guess there’s no cherry trees left in the rose garden to perform a test??!!
Errah, He is a lawyer and his lips are moving , , , ,
jiminga said:
His base are cracked out welfare Junkie Babies that will vote for the One Who he has been waiting for even if he sets them on fire. As long as their hands are filled with cash and goodies they have never worked for or strived to learn something other than whats the most expensive tennis shoe i can buy with this weeks welfare check.
Errah, I’ll be appearing at the Laugh Factory in Baltimore this weekend for two shows nightly. Don’t forget to tip your waitress. I know I will. Thank You and Good Night!
I have the Mute button on but I’ll bet I can sum up Barky’s speech:
Lie, Lie, Lie. Blame Bush. Lie. Whine. Lie. Blame Republicans. Lie. Lie. Whine. Offer up strawmen. Lie. Whine. Look grave and concerned. Lie. Ode to selfless self and sacrifices he’s made and all he’s done. Lie. Blame Bush. Blame Republican intransigence. Lie. Whine. Sniffle. Blame corporate jets. Lie. Lie. Toss some more strawmen in the fire. Praise self. Lie. Lie. And God bless America.
Whirled Peas said:
Right, one can only surmise. Dennis Miller once said; “We need to seperate the helpless from the clueless”. I’ve a good friend that has a terrible arthritic condition. His hands are slowly becoming completely immobile.
( But that hasn’t stopped him in any way from over indulging in drink etc. ) I’ve no idea if one aggravates the other, but it certainly can’t help. Yes, he’s on the Oregon Free Health Plan as is the unemployed sawmill worker MM notes above.
We can’t care more about you than you care about yourself!?
Thank you Michelle for covering this batch of bald-faced lies.
It amazes me that these stories can be easily checked, proven untrue, yet the lies continue in every agenda item.
No researchers or fact checkers for this administration…bamboozled comes to mind.
To start researching the massive web of lies, you must start at the beginning….
The network that produced Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.
The must read article of the day surely is “The Chosen One” by Angelo Codevilla, of The Ruling Class fame.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/07/the_network_that_produced_barack_hussein_obama_jr.html
ditto that. I had NOTHING to do with putting this liar in the oval office
I went to the link to American Thinker (thanks, Green Eyed Lady). Someone in the remarks column called Barky by the name of: M.T. Suit. I like that!!
A democratic socialist LYING to hasten our descent towards communism? Who woulda thought?
I have a friend here at work who is pretty much all liberal all the time and thinks Obamacare is just what the country needs. He was commenting at lunch about a guy who had managed to crash his car into his house, then drive off. When the police caught up to the guy, he was on his cell phone trying to get his auto insurance policy reinstated. When my friend started ranting about how stupid that was, I said:
“So you think it’s OK for the evil insurance company to deny him coverage just because of a ‘pre-existing condition’?”
You should have seen the look on his face…
I can’t believe I wrote that! Thanks for fixing it!!
Yeah, who would know more about Obama’s mother and her condition: Obama, himself, or MM or a no-name author? Hmmm…
PeterPrincipleDem said:
I’ve been lurking for a long time and finally found something to snark about.
Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time.
Michelle:
Did you forget about Stanley Ann Obama-Soetoro, nee Dunham?
Obama told a whopper about her health insurance (non)problem, as well.
Interesting article, backs up what the Reverend James Manning has been saying about Obama and the CIA for years now.
The question of where was Obama when he was supposed to be at Columbia, but no one there at that time remembers him, may in fact be answered by his possible connections with the CIA. We do not know for sure, but unfortunately too many do not want to find out.
MM will not, based on her past articles, ever use her considerable investigative powers to further answer the questions posed at the article linked at The American Thinker.
drbulb said:
Oh, please! Seriously? Did it have an Obama ’08 sticker on the bumper?
Michelle was fairly adamant very early on in this.., ridiculous ‘discussion’ about ram-rodding the role of Gov’t intrusion into HC that um… the whole idea of “insurance” is to have it in advance of NEEDING it!
Suffice to say our house-smashing friend felt he had other ‘uses’ for that money in the interim?
Now, if the GOP eadership would only get that concept drilled into their mushy minds and act accordingly. They should treat interation with the LSM the same as getting into a firefight.
I wish I knew why reading comprehension was such a problem. Oh yeah, public schools.
Obama is a dolt that can barely remember the stories he is told to relate by his handlers, who are equally gullible. Trapped in his ideology of reparations and redistribution, his intellectual deficits do not allow him flexibility. He is doomed to repetition and incompetence.
C’mon folks — these folks “speak powerfully to the impact…” and therefore the story is much more important than the truth! I say let’s give ‘em all a pass and just believe them from now on – we probably can’t handle the truth as we cling to our bibles and guns anyway.
Driven by ambition, Barry used his dying mother as a prop for one of his final campaign ads.
Now we find out that it was all a lie.
http://www.hillaryis44.org/2011/07/15/manchild-in-the-embarrassed-land-enough-is-enough/
Obama and his minions lying??? Say it ain’t so.
I believe O’Barky’s mom was attempting to get disablity payments from the insurance company—which did pay her medical expenses for cancer. I think Cigna said no to disability. She threatened the insurance (Cigna?) with the fact that her son was an attorney. I am sure that scared them (not).
Will Obama tell the truth? Will pigs fly? In order to be a Democrat politician I think you have to check the pathological liar box first.
As they say to everyone that did not have the lower half of their body run over by a steam roller! Interesting, interesting angle. Please share more as you learn.
Hillaryis44: Da’ Bomb.
To ModSucDem’s observation I can only say, if what P’BO shared about his mother’s plight is true, and he WAS a lawyer, he’s either the worst son or worst lawyer on the planet. I’ll let you pick. And yes I’ll Mrs. Malkin’s word over his, her track record is near flawless.
Barky’s is simply flawed.
Barrack Obama manufactures lies right from start. I have stopped listening to him right from Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s anti-american retorical sermons.
He has fine tuned the ‘Liar In Chief’ label.
LIC
Surprised? Obviously no.
This is how the regime will cull the population.
As the brother in the hut can attest, Obama isn’t much on taking care of family.
Have a heart people. My aunt Zoony-Loony was a single mom with 28 kids working 11 jobs at once and she had gout, ingrown toenails, acne, psoraiasis, eczema, gas and post nasal drip. She died of complications from a cold sore, and she told me later her death could have been prevented had BarryCare been available. I wept.
Maybe even both.
Everything about this psuedo-president is a sham. Everything.
Yes, those EVIL insurance companies didn’t want to pay for all her expenses, including the ones she was responsible for paying. Are we then surprised that he wants to have those with money pay for all the needs and wants of those who have less? His mama taught him well. Once you get what you deserve, then go after what you don’t deserve, because, after all, you ultimately deserve to have it since those evil rich people stole it before you could steal it.
He just hasn’t explained how he’s helping us enough – but we’re too dumb to understand anyway. Still running that meme with the debt ceiling debate. Unbelievable.
I sincerely hope he keeps it up. Tell voters they’re stupid Barry. Folks love a condescending politician when they’re out of work.
Anus O’Barky, I knew Sock puppet had another name and until now was never sure.
+100
Nice!!
Don’t forget “is” from Slick Willie.
Whatever the meaning of “is” is…….
Swede #63: Some Americans are stupid…they love having this socialist call them that. For the rest of us, yeah, keep calling me stupid. As if I could dislike you more. Yeah, as if.
What a surprise. How “unexpected” this all is. After all, our Sham-Wow-In-Chief produced a “birth certificate” that was obviously Photoshopped. (And badly, I might add.) He routinely misreports economic news (see “saved or created”), says he’s “rolling up his sleeves” (as he heads off to another weekend of golf). Then he says he’s serious about deficit reduction (as Moochelle heads off to a half-million dollar taxpayer funded vacation to Africa). And let’s not mention an illegal war (sorry, I meant “kinetic military action”) that we have going in Lybia. I don’t want to create an encyclopedic post here, but this guy’s lies and obfuscations make the Clintons look like grade school stuff.
If there’s one silver lining in all of this, it will center on the outstanding job that our child-molesting TSA and our border securing DHS are doing under this administration. Ultimately they will probably allow a real terrorist into the country, who will do the job that this chicken$hit Congress will not do: remove Barry Sotero and all the a$$hats he has around him from office. My American flag will not be flying at half-mast when that happens.
That’s putting it lightly, but a good one Michelle.
Typical leftist, lying constantly. As bad as Little Dick Gebhardt dredging up imaginary friends all the time.
Right next to the Salvador Dali exhibit.
…particularly when your name pops up on a voter registration card showing you voted…after you are pushing daisies.
You gotta turd in your pocket Happy?
I didn’t vote for this raving nitwit.
Do you sometimes wonder why it is that a “president” with a photoshopped BC, a stolen SS number and a bogus Selective Service Registration card, just for starters, must be fought tooth and nail on his “policies”?
Why do so few people want to confront the issue that could remove Barry from his fake presidency and undo the damage already done?
Whatever the consequences, it’s not possible they could be worse than letting him stay in office, whether it’s for another 1.5 years or 5.5 years and then rewarding him with a multi-million dollar retirement..
Something really weird has happened to my America.
Nay.
GTFO 2012!
Gutted like a fish.
I can’t either. Nothing a couple whacks with the skillet won’t fix. Get to it!
…and who could ignore more evidence such as letters from his skank mother that friends provided to the author than some moronic leftist such as yourself.
Given he’s a leftist….coke and hookers I’m sure.
Here’s a real story. The healthcare premiums for our family business went up 25% THIS January. Because of the slow economy, we are struglling to pay up, whereas we never had before. Thanks Obama.
I have a scary fable for you Mr. President:
One day the American President thought that he very special, and he could do anything that he wanted. So, he spent all of his country’s dollars on stupid things and when he ran out of money he wanted permission to spend more. But, the wise people of the country said NO! You have to be frugal and not waste all of our money on liberal dreams like turtle tunnels and marsh mouse habitats. So the president laughed and laughed and said he would just print all the money he wanted and spend, spend, spend no matter what, and he did. So, when the day came to reelect the president, the people who ran to the polls 4 years earlier to elect him decided to elect another candidate because they were very angry at the president who broke all of his promises and spent all of their money. So, the shamed president had to go back to the land of Chicago and live in the house of Michelle until he died, a broken and forgotten man, from terminal hen-pecking. And the happy citizens rejoiced for their new president listened to them and never forgot the mighty power of the VOTER WHO HOLDS POLITICIANS ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS.
I’d like to know what happened to “Dawn Smith,” a person that MoveOn.org turned into their poster child for reform.
As soon as the bill was signed, she was seemingly vanished down the memory hole.
Of course. She was just another plant. They use them for everything. Remember the doctors in the white coats on the WH lawn? Everything this administration does is for show. It is all a sham and a fraud. Not only do they lie all the time, but they bring in people to help them out with the lie. Sad, really, because most of those “shills” are really innocent and think the POTUS is telling the truth. Then they get shown out the back door, past the garbage, like Netanyahu and the Dahli Lahma.