Oops... another MAJOR Clinton campaign story turns out to be...a .... lie!!!

[mckeown1128]

I don't know if this has already been posted.


I've heard Hillary Clinton tell the story many times in speeches, and it rarely fails to bring a horrified gasp from the crowd: An uninsured and pregnant Ohio woman, working for minimum wage at a pizza parlor, is turned away from a hospital because she can't come up with $100. The baby dies, and so does the woman. Clinton talks about how this woman haunts her, and how stories like this show the moral imperative--and the urgency--of fixing a badly broken health care system.

Except, it turns out, it didn't happen--at least, apparently, not the way Clinton said it did. There was indeed a tragedy last August in Athens, Ohio, in which a woman, Trina Bachtel, gave birth to a stillborn baby and subsequently died herself. But the New York Times reports this morning that the hospital involved says Bachtel had coverage,and received treatment. And here's the remarkable part, given how important this story has become to the overall narrative of the Clinton candidacy:

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.”

What is astounding here is that for all the research that the Clinton campaign has done, scouring and scrubbing the opposition, they didn't put a bit more effort into looking at what their own candidate is saying.

http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/04/oops_another_clinton_story_tur.html

With video goodness: http://bravenewfilms.org/blog/34835-hillary-clinton-tells-false-health-care-horror-story


Good thing for her that Obama is running an above-the-fray campaign... he could sink her with this... after snipergate and this... she would be toast...


Edit: Isn't it sick that Hillary is exploiting and lying about someones death for political purposses.

[TechBear_Seattle]

1. Yet another "misstatement" from the Clinton campaign

Imagine that. :eyes:

[Barack_America]

2. The most incompetent political campaign in recent memory.

I feel sorry for her small donors, who have sacrificed for this pathetic effort.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

5. Can they demand a refund?

[flor de jasmim]

3. yes, many times - I thought you meant "ANOTHER" (!) :-)

[mckeown1128]

4. kick.nt

[mckeown1128]

7. kick...nt

[DearAbby]

6. Sleep deprived....heaven knows

she should have brought along her sleep number bed, Her Number is 44, Bill's number is 69. :evilgrin:

[quantass]

17. .

[ORDem]

8. kick

:kick:

[Perry Logan]

9. Since the people who call Hillary a liar are the biggest liars in town, it's hard to evaluate.

[Buzz Clik]

11. And just how did your post throw any light on this discussion?

[dchill]

19. So what do we call people who say she's not...

a liar? Oh, same thing we call people who say the people who call Hillary a liar are the biggest liars in town. Whoa.

[Buzz Clik]

10. Yes, this has been discussed. It is a non-issue!

If Clinton was given bad information, then so be it. He basic point is still correct.

This ranks up there with the nitpicking against Al Gore, such as when he showed a picture of high school girl in a Florida classroom with no desk. Gore was told it was because of underfunding. The principal became involved and disputed it and Limbaugh et al made a big deal of it. Regardless of whether that girl in that school had no desk because of underfunding, we all knew that there were millions of children receiving poor education because of funding problems.

Same thing here. We know that the problem Hillary outlined is true whether or not this case had all the details she outlined.

[dchill]

20. * sigh * - But she EMBELLISHED the story.

And anyone worth their salt who is running for president - or not - should know that in Ohio, it is illegal to deny health services because the patient cannot pay. So the problem Hillary "outlined" (clever terminology) is not the problem in Ohio, and was definitely NOT the problem of the unfortunate woman and her child, who HAD insurance and was NOT a minimum-wage earner.

The point is that the woman just can't stop confabulating - and lying.

[Buzz Clik]

23. Did she embellish the story, or was she fed bad info. The difference is critical.

Show me that she was the one who embellished -- or sanctioned the embellishment -- and I'm on board.

[dchill]

24. I do not have proof that she embellished...

the story, but every account of the various times she repeated the story, it seems to vary in one detail or another, like the recent addition of the "minimum wage worker" non-fact. She speaks as if quoting someone or other, yet the quotes vary. You know what I mean, no one in the news media is going to say that any of these particular items are lies or embellishments, but we know that she does it - from Tuzla to Ireland to S-CHIP. And it makes no difference to me whether you are "on board" or not, I think I can tell when somebody is just riffing - and Hillary, in my opinion, is riffing the hell out of every story she tells. Here's a harder challenge - prove I'm wrong.
:)

[zulchzulu]

12. At least the story doesn't have the "sniper fire" embellishment for good measure

Hillary could have added that the mother and baby were under sniper fire and they had to duck while trying to give birth....so this lie isn't so bad....


:sarcasm:

[tpsbmam]

13. I give her a pass on this one......

Yeah, they should have checked the story out further but it's not like she LIED or made the story up out of thin air (unlike the sniper story). I don't consider this a lie -- blunder yes, lie no. All candidates are going to goof up at some point.

[Mezzo]

14. I wonder if that woman was airlifted to the hospital in a plane chartered by the Kennedy family. nt

[mmonk]

15. Her campaign was sloppy in the vetting process. However,

she is not to be blamed for something she may have thought came from a reliable source. But her campaign is.

[quantass]

16. Not again...

[Rosemary2205]

18. I just had an Al Gore flashback

Somewhere along the line he had a woman stand up in the audience and told us all the poor old woman had to live in her motor home and spent her days picking up cans in order to pay for her medicines. She likely had talked to a staffer at the venue, the story was compelling and in the heat of the campaign they went with it. Human nature wires us to want to believe heartbreak stories. Likely no one even thought of vetting the woman's story before they decided to have her stand up and use her example. Later we found out that woman was a UAW retiree with a great pension, cadillac pharmacy bennies, and the RV was quite expensive and luxurious and was for travelling not her primary residence.

Hillary lies, A LOT, but my guess is that this is just one of those cases where the campaign thought they were using something real (a cop told them about this afterall) and got bit. And quite frankly, if they thought the story was true (a cop told them about this afterall) then "exploit for political gain" isn't the case - illustrating a broken healthcare system would be the case.

[LeFleur1]

21. Hospital Said

I thought the hospital said the woman was treated at an "affliated obstetric clinic".
Where would that be? In somebody's shed somewhere?
I can see why the hospital would want her to stop talking about it, but that doesn't mean there wasn't some truth to it. Maybe further investigation?

[Rosemary2205]

22. Even in big city Atlanta we have this

All my doctors used to be Emory. Sometimes I'd go to the hospital and sometimes to the spine center or "Emory Clinic". Piedmont, St Joes and even Grady have "clinics" all over Atlanta. For a birth that's expected to be routine there's no reason why a birthing center couldn't handle it.