Obama “Mischaracterized” Mother’s Health Insurance Problems Print
By Ashton Ellis
Thursday, July 14 2011
So, where were all the self-appointed “fact checkers” during the last presidential campaign and ObamaCare fight? The single most emotionally compelling argument espoused by President Obama to “do something” about health care turns out to be, well, a lie.

A new book written by a former New York Times reporter shows that candidate and then President Barack Obama grossly misrepresented – at best – his mother’s dispute with an insurance company over benefits while she was dying. 

A Times article citing the book, A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother by Janny Scott, shows how several of Obama’s statements regarding his mother’s fight over coverage for a pre-existing condition were used to justify passage of the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as ObamaCare. 

In campaign stops, a 2008 debate with Senator John McCain and during remarks throughout the ObamaCare legislative odyssey, Obama repeatedly referenced an insurance company’s denial of coverage as giving him a “personal stake” in health care reform.

According to letters from his mother, however, the story isn’t true.  In fact, his mother was apparently never denied health insurance coverage for her cancer treatments, pre-existing or otherwise.  Her disputes were actually over a disability claim she made.  When that was challenged, the delay in compensation made it difficult for her to pay her health insurance deductible and uncovered expenses. 

So, where were all the self-appointed “fact checkers” during the last presidential campaign and ObamaCare fight?  The single most emotionally compelling argument espoused by President Obama to “do something” about health care turns out to be, well, a lie.  (Or, if you prefer, a gross misrepresentation of the truth.) 

Instead of a logical, financially sound argument supported by facts and reason, America was sold an untouchable story about the injustice of a penny-pinching industry that willfully denied coverage to a dying woman.  This kind of distorted appeal is already being repeated by liberals and their lobbyist friends trying to shame fiscal conservatives into raising taxes to avert a debt default. 

As, for example, the George Soros-affiliated “Agenda Project” is doing with its ad “Is America Beautiful without Medicare?”  The political commercial depicts an elderly woman being pushed around a park in a wheelchair by an overdressed young man.  Without making eye contact or breathing a word to grandma, the man diverts onto a dirt path and after a brief struggle, literally dumps grandma off a cliff.  The implication is that Republicans will end Medicare and without the program, the elderly will die. 

A similar wince-inducing appeal appeared as a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal.  There, an elderly woman with pensive eyes was framed by words telling voters to hold Republicans accountable for saving Medicare.  Since one of the sponsors of the ad is Service Employee International Union (SEIU), one of the most liberal labor unions in America, it can be assumed that by “saving” the group means leaving the entitlement on its present unsustainable course. 

Obama’s false memories about his mother’s death are cut from the same emotionally titillating cloth as the grandma-off-the-cliff commercial.  They play on the fears expressed by the frightened woman in the SEIU advertisement.  But they are not arguments for reform.  They are appeals to false choices. 

Because the defenders of the entitlement state peddle this kind of political nonsense as an unsatisfying substitute for facts, Republican debt limit negotiators – and fiscal conservatives in the wider arena – should be focusing America’s attention like a laser on the real facts and figures driving the debate: a $14.3 trillion debt limit that has already been exceeded; a current budget deficit of $4 trillion; a 9.2 percent unemployment rate.  And if some people need a visual, replace grandma with a passel of kids getting thrown off a cliff because of the crushing debt their generation will inherit. 

But the fact remains that you can’t negotiate emotion, only reality.  Republicans should keep insisting on facts, as House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) is doing by asking the simple and still unanswered question, “Where is President Obama’s budget plan?” 

As conservatives continue to push for real reforms in government spending and size, top negotiators should insist on fact-checking every argument and figure tossed out by President Obama and his liberal cohort. 

To paraphrase the Gipper, trust if you must, but always verify.