Yesterday I wrote about the health care plans of the three candidates and the day before about the different way of how some of their overstatements were reported by the media. Today I am going to mix both topics, prompted by another article from Paul Krugman “Health Care Horror Stories” that appeared in Friday’s New York Times.
I will not repeat myself about the Obama overstatements, nor will I repeat the Bosnia one from Clinton. I would though go back to the story that since early March Senator Clinton told in campaign audiences about a young Ohio pregnant woman who, lacking health insurance and unable to pay the minimum charge of $100 in a hospital, eventually died. Clinton never named the woman or the hospital. She was just using that example to show the need for universal health coverage in the United States. The story was picked up by The Washington Post which identified the woman and reported that the hospital where she died had claimed the story was false. The media then went into a frenzy and accused the senator of making things up. It was another piece of “I caught you”. But that is what many in the country want and the media is only too happy to feed them with it. Brainwashed by all the reality shows, who cares about a health care story when we could talk about Clinton and her problems with the truth? Nobody even thought that she was just reporting accurately what she had been told.
As it happened, Hillary Clinton who had got the story second hand did not have all the facts. The young woman had gone to a local clinic where she was turned away for her inability to pay and eventually she went to the hospital which later made the disclaim. It was in that hospital that she died. What is clear is that she did not get the proper care when she needed it because of the lack of universal coverage.
When the truth became known and it was clear that Senator Clinton had not invented the story, apologies were few and small. In all this story, what was even more unbecoming was the spectacle of many of the fervent Obama followers joining in this spectacle of distorting things. Let me finish by quoting from Paul Krugman’s article: “Look, I know that many progressives have their hearts set on seeing Barack Obama get the Democratic nomination. But politics is supposed to be about more than cheering your team and jeering the other side. It’s supposed to be about changing the country for the better.”
Let us just not talk about ‘change’ but create some. Universal health coverage is one of the changes the country needs.
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