Your mother lies dying in the hospital, unable to work because of her Stage 3 uterine and ovarian cancer. While her medical procedures are largely covered by her health insurance plan, there is a large deductible and several hundred dollars of unpaid expenses each month. The insurance company is not honoring her disability insurance because a doctor had written in her medical file that she suspected uterine cancer a couple of months before she started her job. However, your mother claims that that information was not shared with her. And, in any case, it was only a suspicion. Your mother asks you to take over the job of fighting the insurance company. That is what happened to Barack Obama and his mother. And that is what just earned the president three pinocchios from the Washington Post.
Why has the president been lying about his mother’s death? Well, according to the Washington Post he has been deliberately suggesting that his mother was denied funds for her medical care from her health insurance, not her disability insurance. This is supposedly a big distinction.
The president has a strong recollection of watching his mother fight with an insurance company about covering the cost of her health care because of her supposedly pre-existing condition. He thinks this is a terrible injustice and not a way to die with dignity. It inspires him to fight so that other people will not face the same or similar situations.
But it turns out to be insincere political posturing because his mother’s “pre-existing condition” only prevented her from receiving the money she needed to pay her deductible and the fees not covered by her health insurance. That this is an example of an insurance company going to whatever lengths it can to deny payment is supposedly irrelevant or misleading.
Does the Washington Post want to look the president in the face and tell him that the way his mother was treated by an insurance company while she was dying isn’t personal?
I doubt they’d have the lack of decency to do that. But they’ll do the same thing in the pages of their paper.
And yet the WH will leak classified stuff to David Ignatius. Go figure!! Since both clowns work for Kaplan.
I suppose a family history of uterine cancer would make one suspect its possibility, but she may have just feared it. Anybody who grows up female in America knows she will spend her life terrorized by and submitting to the medical industry.
She’s lucky to still have the strength to fight for her own autonomy at the point when the insurance peddlers start to pile on. This is a hard lesson for a son.
Washington DC is the wrong place to look for decency these days.
Ah, WaPo! Filling the vacuum left by Politifact.
I am really moved by the Post’s rigor in trying to pretend Obama is at least a little bit like the sweltering pile of hate-inducing and habitual lying with is also known as the GOP.
Oh, and thanks for whole-heartedly joining the GOP approach by dishonestly attacking one of Obama’s strengths: his integrity
WaPo might heed the notion that promoting a re creation of the entire story here to fit the outcome of a 3 Pinocchio president at this moment could prove fodder for not just this blog, but Jon Stewart and late night friends but onward…
The instant gratification of re working the story in order to create a gotcha to perhaps look ‘balanced’ for the Fox and Friends segment is so cockeyed. Fox will go with it, Stewart will bash it and dinner tables will see lots of food throwing. But it won’t simply become a notch for WaPo, in these times it could easily turn around and eat their Rushie lunch.
This is after all a week when the Supremes are hearing arguments on the Health Care Bill and reasons count.
I had a quick look over the Pinocchio scale to see how bad 3 is…the test itself is a crock. You can earn 1 Pinocchio for essentially telling the truth. A scale like that paints everybody as a liar–if you’re reading that someone’s statements of fact earn him/her “Pinocchios,” how many does it take to seed the idea that they’re lying?
Not to mention Kessler is just basically full of it. I’d say he should go work for the Washington Times, but unfortunately the WaPo is nowadays a perfect fit for him.
The Villagers have been flogging this story for a while, though I thought they’d given it up to defend the honor of Rutherford B. Hayes.