You know that story about Obama’s mother’s health insurance? Well…
…it turns out that Obama’s story of his mother’s health insurance woes was misleading—to put the nicest spin on it. The facts have come out in a new biography of Ann Dunham, Obama’s mother, who died of ovarian cancer in 1995 at the relatively young age of 52.
I have no doubt that it was a sad and horrific experience for both Dunham and her entire family. But Obama’s narrative about it—which he’s offered in many addresses about the perils of health care insurance in this country—is that, in addition to struggling with the illness itself, his mother had to wrestle with insurance companies determined to deny her health coverage due to their assertion of a pre-existing condition:
“I remember in the last month of her life, she wasn’t thinking about how to get well, she wasn’t thinking about coming to terms with her own mortality, she was thinking about whether or not insurance was going to cover the medical bills and whether our family would be bankrupt as a consequence,” Obama said in September 2007.
“She was in her hospital room looking at insurance forms because the insurance company said that maybe she had a pre-existing condition and maybe they wouldn’t have to reimburse her for her medical bills,” Obama added in January 2008.
Dunham’s biographer Janny Scott was not writing a hit job on Obama or his mother. The book, A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother, is basically admiring. But Ms. Scott’s research inadvertently revealed facts about Dunham’s final illness that elucidate her son’s story:
Ann’s compensation for her job in Jakarta had included health insurance, which covered most of the costs of her medical treatment,” Scott writes. “Once she was back in Hawaii, the hospital billed her insurance company directly, leaving Ann to pay only the deductible and any uncovered expenses, which, she said, came to several hundred dollars a month.”
Scott writes that Dunham, who wanted to be compensated for those costs as well as for her living expenses, “filed a separate claim under her employer’s disability insurance policy.” It was that claim, with the insurance company CIGNA, that was denied in August 1995 because, CIGNA investigators said, Dunham’s condition was known before she was covered by the policy.
What’s the difference? Well, if Obama is using the story to illustrate the problems with health insurance coverage and it actually involves a job-related disability insurance policy, that’s a very different animal. What’s more, if a person is refused coverage for cancer treatment as a whole, this involves a huge amount of money and yes, it could easily bankrupt even a working person. But being refused coverage for the deductible and uncovered expenses, which apparently came to a couple of thousand dollars a year, is hardly the sort of story that’s required if the goal is to alarm people. So, best to imply that things were even worse.
If you go back and look at the Obama quotes above, you’ll note an interesting phenomenon: he never actually says that it was his mother’s health insurance company that denied coverage—although he’s using the argument in the health care coverage debate, and he has to know that almost every listener will assume that’s what he meant. Instead, he carefully uses the words “insurance” and the word “medical bills.”
Technically, it was insurance that was involved—but it was disability insurance. And technically, there were indeed uncovered medical bills—but they only involved a deductible and incidental and relatively minor payments. The bulk of the bills were paid, and by Dunham’s health insurance.
Ah, but maybe Obama just didn’t know the details. That might be true, except for one little thing—Scott reports that, after the disability payments were denied, Ann Dunham wrote the company (CIGNA) a letter saying that “she was turning over the case to ‘my son and attorney, Barack Obama.'” So we can assume that Obama was well aware of the facts. And technically, he’s not actually lying when he says she was trying to get money from insurance to pay for medical expenses. But to use the story to imply that she was denied health insurance coverage is purposely misleading—but being misleading is Obama’s specialty.
[NOTE: As far as bankrupting the family goes—in the 90s Obama was a professor at the University of Chicago, as well as an attorney at the Chicago law firm of Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland. He was already married but he and Michelle had no children, and she was gainfully employed as well. Of course, it’s not required that Obama pay his mother’s health care cost overrun, but to claim that health care expenses of a few hundred dollars a month threatened to bankrupt “our family,” as Obama stated, seems ludicrous.]
So the lesson here from the President is that no one should have to pay for a person’s for health care, except the nation at large. I see no problem with unintended consequences and poor incentives there.
And to think there are people moved to the point of misty eyes at hearing this man speak.
It’s not so much the lying that gets to me as the narcissism.
I’m used to the fact that Obama lies. My expectations are so low that I’m impressed he stuck so much to the truth – this has, what?, about 50% accuracy?
The problem is that he can turn everything to be about *him* and *his* issues and what *he* wants to do, and why everyone else should go along with *him*.
I know George H.W Bush was a one term President, but I adore the fact that he went to such extreme lengths to push himself and the “Great I Am” out of the picture. I’m sure it drove his speechwriters batty but, with the benefits of distance and a narcissist in the WH, it’s kind of endearing.
If Obama really thinks his plans are for the best, why not simply state the political, social, philisophical and economic underpinnings behind them? Hard cases make bad law, and the lies he tells in his examples do him no favours.
Neo is absolutely right on about this. Having had the unfortunate opportunity to deal with an employer-sponsored disability plan, and it also being CIGNA, I can tell you that there is a HUGE difference between health/medical insurance and a short or long term disability policy. The fact that there is the potential that Obama interchanged medical and disability insurance “facts” without regard or knowledge is proof he doesn’t know a damned thing when it comes to healthcare. I can tell you firsthand that disability policies are notorious for denying claims and that they almost always lead to an appeal process; these policies are protected by an ironclad federal law, under ERISA. This is not the case for medical insurance. His mother may well have been denied disability benefits and she entrusted her anointed son to file the appeal. There is no way he didn’t know what was going on. So, as usual when he used his mother’s story – sad indeed – he did so knowing he was twisting the truth.
I fondly [sarcasm] remember how President Clinton’s pronouncements all had to be parsed very thoroughly and carefully.
Disability insurance! — not health insurance.
Sigh.
I always wondered about the insurance story because it wasn’t clear whether she had been insured the whole time she was abroad. I didn’t know she was on the payroll of an American company or foundation that provided employee coverage. Now I question about the living expenses. I would have thought she would have moved in with her mother given her illness. In my family, when someone was seriously ill, family and friends all pitched in to help.
So a Red lied to advance the Party’s interest? Color me astonished.
My favorite Obama lie was his story about how his mother and father met on a bridge marching in Selma, “got together,” the condom broke (OK, I’m reading between the lines here), and the result was little Buraq.
This story conveniently ignores the fact that he was four years old in 1965, when the Selma march took place, and the implication that his mother and father were a loving couple is belied by the facts that 1) they lived together for a grand total of two weeks, after which Stan left for Seattle, and 2) Stan returned a couple years later to divorce Buraq Sr., who split for Harvard.
Apart from that, the story is lovely. Not true, but lovely.
I agree with JaneLK about the material differences between health and disability insurance, and of course about the malignant effects of ERISA preemption on insurance company behavior. And I certainly must agree the President left out some important facts in his account of his mother’s travails.
None of which changes the fact abuses are not infrequent in health insurance cases also:
Andrews-Clarke
Battery replacement denied
Sarkisyan
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Andrews-Clarke
This shows you how low this man can go. To use his own mother as part of the narrative to complete his story is so unbecoming. And now look what he’s trying to say about the seniors not getting their ss checks….the man will absolutely say (lie) anything to accomplish his political goals.
One last thing: I do disagree with JaneLK’s suggestion that health insurance isn’t subject to ERISA — it is, if it’s employer-provided. There are some state law measures that survive, like so-called independent review boards (the “independence” of which is, shall we say, in some doubt) but the same influences that drive corrupt insurer behavior – the lack of meaningful remedies for breach of contract, fraud or worse — is present to exactly the same degree for employer-provided health coverage.
There is a glimmer of hope as of May 16 (Amara), and there’s some chance ACA will ameliorate this to some extent (it’s an unknown, which is of course one of the big problems with ACA). But it’s quite ambiguous and is one of the very many issues the courts will have to sort out.
Sorry ’bout the blog-whoring; just using it for shorthand. Not like I get a lot of traffic in any case…
I assume as a baseline that Obama is lying, so like Liz I’m surprised not when he lies, but when he says anything remotely true.
The story OB relates has unfortunately slipped down the memory-hole – but my word, what a steaming hunk of bullsh*t that was. How does anyone get away with lying like that?
I think there’s a difference, too, between the “bend the truth” lies such as this one about insurance and the Selma lie. If I were a politician, I’d probably reconcile myself to having to bend the truth, or, as Reinhold Niebuhr memorably put it, use “emotionally potent oversimplifications.” But to just completely fabricate a story out of thin air, and about one’s parents to boot, betokens something pathological. There’s not even an argument to be made that it’s necessary in politics. It just isn’t. It’s totally unnecessary. So why do it?
That’s why I assume a priori that Obama’s lying whenever he speaks. He clearly does not have a conscience about it, and in that sense he is a full-blown Alinskyite (who would by definition have to be a compulsive liar).
OTOH, my family’s health insurance has gotten more expensive, while covering less, since Ocare got passed. And we’re definitely not the only ones,. I hate him and people like him who are making our lives unhappier.
To use his own mother as part of the narrative to complete his story is so unbecoming.
John Edwards would be proud at this rookie’s nascent efforts. Even Kerry – Kerry, for God’s sake, no mean prevaricator himself – was shocked by Edwards’ mendacity in relating a story about his son’s death, a story he had “never told anyone before.”
That’s some world-class prevarication, there. Buraq is a piker by comparison.
(The surprising thing to me is that no one caught the lie at the time. Even without any particular knowledge, as soon as I’d heard it I thought that Selma was in the mid-60s, not the early 60s. But apparently none of the reporters recalled that, or were too much in the bag to raise the point.)
As Robert Heinlein once wrote, the second-best way to lie is to tell the truth, but not all of it — just enough to give the misleading impression you want. President Obama is a past master at this.
(The best way to lie, according to Heinlein, is to tell the truth, maybe even all of it, but to tell it so unconvincingly that everyone is sure you are lying. That’s not President Obama’s style — he wants people to believe him — so I have no idea if he’s good at that too.)
she wasn’t thinking about how to get well, she wasn’t thinking about coming to terms with her own mortality, she was thinking about whether …
THOSE CAPITALIST OPPRESSORS were going to get away with something!
Obama has lied so many times that this is not surprising – he purposely tells lies (Ayers is just some guy in his neighborhood, etc.), he lies by omission, and he even makes stuff up on the fly to fit the narrative (doctors charging $50,000 to remove a limb, etc.). Heck, every time he says “As I’ve said before…” you know that something new is about to be uttered.
That being said, I like that people are starting to document it for the public record. The MSM was very successful at hiding and/or ignoring all of Obama’s inconvenient truths in the 2008 campaign. It’s about time he is held accountable for instances of lying such as this.
Libby raises an important point: that Obama’s prevarications, like those of other Dems, would be politically fatal but for the complicity of the MSM. If the media even half-pretended to do their job they’d never get away with this.
The media have so much to answer for.
Yes – The MSM has been successful at suppressing so much since the 2008 campaign. I’m at the point where I’ve accepted that he’ll get away with most of it, but that the truth will eventually be documented for posterity. Can’t wait for the books to be written by his cabinet members, etc. after they have outlived their usefulness to him and/or no longer depend on him for their livelihood. Maybe this is why he has such a small inner circle?
OB, I’ve just taken the position that the press is lying as well until proven otherwise. It makes following news stories a lot easier.
As others have noted, from BHO’s perspective everything is about him. You don’t need a psychiatrist to diagnose Obama. He’s a classic example of narcissistic personality disorder. I venture the opinion that he may also be sociopathic because to me he comes across as cold and uncaring. And I wonder how neurotic Bo the Portuguese Water Dog must be after 2+ years in the White House with the first family.
About this corrupt press issue, if the truth be told, an America five years without television would probably be a healed America.
Yes — The MSM has been successful at suppressing so much since the 2008 campaign.
Make that the 1968 campaign. We just didn’t know about it then. See Cronkite, Walter.
“”And I wonder how neurotic Bo the Portuguese Water Dog must be after 2+ years in the White House with the first family.””
Parker
Bo the Portugese Water Dog is now a community organiser raising awareness for all dogs oppressed by a treatless existence.
“Duping Delight”
Socially engineering a reality in the minds of people listening and assuming validity.
If ideology says lies are OK as a fundamental view of reality, and the ideology says the end justifies the means, and that its OK to manipulate people (without their permission), what should we really expect of someone who is a leader within that ideology?
just asking..
According to my husband, he learned in law school that if you are going to tell a lie, you should try to base it as much on the truth as possible.
For the record, I am married to a very sweet and honest attorney.
Obama’s most recent lie is he does not know if there will be enough money for Social Security checks on August 3. Imagine the fear that creates in poor older people. He’s a real SOB.
Here’s the proof Obama lied:
http://blogs.reuters.com/james-pethokoukis/2011/07/12/the-issue-isnt-default-but-government-shutdown/
The simple reality is that Barack Obama, at least since he came on the national stage, has never told the truth about any substantive issue. One can absolutely count on him to lie about every issue.
Long post describing pre-existing and insurance law and practice, edited for spelling and clarity, went blooey upon hitting submit.
So, scrooit.
Just will say that the dems’ poster childs for health insurance demagoguery have all turned out to be fakes, from the Clintons’ first attempt.
kolnai at 4:01 pm . . .
Speaking of Reinhold Niebuhr, didn’t President Liar once tell some fawning media whore that he was reading “Reinhold Niebuhr”?
Who the heck is Reinhold Niebuhr? He’s kind of like “kierkegaard,” isn’t he? Or maybe not.
😉
Promethea –
Indeed, I was going to make a joke about invoking Niebuhr, but I wasn’t clever enough so I just let it stand. It was David Brooks, to his everlasting discredit, who got goose-bumps from Obama bloviating about Niebuhr, by the way.
Niebuhr was an interesting guy. Pretty much a socialist in politics (he was a co-founder of Americans for Democratic Action; also the founder of the liberal journal “Christianty and Society”), he was also a brilliant theologian and a surprisingly astute political theorist. Being a socialist of a very old school, quasi-Fabian sort, he wasn’t prone to utopian reveries, odd as that may sound. He was actually a rock-headed realist, though not a cynic (i.e., he was no Alinskyite, though it is easy to see how someone like Obama could confuse them). Conservatives like Michael Novak, Norman Podhoretz, and Irving Kristol always had a soft-spot for Niebuhr.
The phrase I borrowed from him comes from what I consider his best book, “Moral Man in Immoral Society,” but he wrote plenty of other good books, not least his theological works, peppered with wonderful aphorisms such as this:
“It is not wise for a theologian to know too much about the temperature of hell or the furniture of heaven.”
Inasmuch as Niebuhr was a (very) idiosyncratic Protestant, he and Kierkegaard were alike. Kierkegaard was obviously the superior thinker, and indeed, one of the greatest thinkers of all time. In terms of rank and genius, the two are separate leagues. Kierkegaard is for all time; Niebuhr is nice to consider and dip into from time to time.
That being said though, Niebuhr’s understanding of man and his place in history is quite fascinating. Very briefly, two facts about man are central for Niebuhr:
1) Self-transcendence – we are alone in the world in being able to look to the past and project to the future from the present, taking in infinity and beyond, striving for God, essentially free;
2) Fallenness – the myth of the Fall is true, (though not literally) in the following sense: being free, man is anxious; anxiety makes us self-interested; when we assert ourselves, we do so firstly to secure our interest and alleviate anxiety; continuing in that vein leads to “pride” and then to a deluge of sin; to realize this about ourselves is too shameful, so as a panacea we choose to worship whatever “truth” we set up in order to evade God’s judgement (this is the golden calf).
Niebuhr’s prescription for man, given the way that our self-transcending and fallen nature boxes us into inevitable cycles of selfishness, sin, and idolatry, is not the libertine “do what you will” that has come to typify liberalism, but the opposite: sincere, sustained inward repentance.
I don’t wan to give Obama more credit than he merits, but it’s possible his numerous “apology tours” and his generally apologetic attitude about his own country are based on a simplistic misappropriation of this idea of Niebuhr’s. If so, Obama has clearly forgotten that the prescription was INWARD repentance – the only real repentance there is, after all – and instead has done what’s typical of his kind of activist intellectual: mutilated an idea to fit one’s political agenda.
Niebuhr never did that, and it would be a shame if his good name were to be forever associated with Obama’s (even though Niebuhr, we must admit, probably would have voted for him – he certainly would not have had leg-tingles).
P.S. – Love “President Liar.” I can’t say why it’s so funny, though – perhaps because it doesn’t try to be cute (like NObama and the like) and just assumes that we know who “Liar” refers to. For whatever reason, I burst out laughing when I read that.
Good on ‘ya.
liar in chief.
“So, scrooit.
Just will say that the dems’ poster childs for health insurance demagoguery have all turned out to be fakes, from the Clintons’ first attempt.”
Aptly put and succinct. 😉
“It was David Brooks, to his everlasting discredit, who got goose-bumps from Obama bloviating about Niebuhr, by the way.”
Brooks, Obama, Kierkegaard, Niebuhr, et all make my skin crawl. I’m a simple man, show me the money or the lack thereof.
Obama was never a law professor. He was a part-time lecturer on civil rights law. He and Michelle were deeply in debt until the book money came in. When Obama was elected to the Senate, Michelle got a huge raise, and her job was essentially to try to get members of the black community around the University of Chicago to use other emergency rooms instead of the University Hospital one.
I always get the idea that it isn’t so much lying, as believing that it doesn’t matter what he says, his “gift” will make whatever he says palatable. and everyone will believe him. He is certainly unfamiliar with the truth, but he doesn’t worry about it. Weird.
Kolnai,
Thanks for the Niebuhr info. As to repentence, Obama can speak for himself. I’m quite capable of confronting my own sinfulness.
expat –
“As to repentance, Obama can speak for himself. I’m quite capable of confronting my own sinfulness.”
Precisely.
In fact, isn’t it revealing that the one entity Obama conspicuously fails to demonstrate any repentance for is himself? He’s sorry for everything everyone else did, this “sort of God” (as Evan Thomas put it, non-ironically) – he’s sorry for the American past, he’s sorry for middle American “clinginess,” he’s sorry that the average American is non-rational, emotional, and occasionally fatuous enough to succumb to the temptation to vote Republican, he’s sorry for the bad writing of his messaging team, he’s sorry for the petty, quotidian motives of others, and on and on – but a divinity like Obama, make a mistake? Commit a sin? Not possible. God does not make mistakes.
The theology of Obamaism would tell quite a story if ever analyzed. (I don’t have the stomach for it.)
The man has never met a truth he couldn,t torture.
The myth we live under and act upon as is empirical truth is that there are no ‘bad people’, and as i explained before, you dont defend against what you dont believe exists….
Elephant’s Child: the professor nomenclature has been discussed many times, and I decided some time ago to refer to Obama as a professor at the U. of Chicago, because that’s the word the U. of Chicago Law School uses:
Neo, Richard Epstein, who is on the Law School faculty has laughed when asked if Obama was on the tenure track, and said emphatically no!
He says that Obama was never offered tenure, and that he passed through U. Chicago without absorbing any of the internal culture there. The post he occupied is apparently a job that is often offered to politicians, to give them a resume boost.
Sounds like the Law School offers a politically correct response to inquiries. (I don’t make these things up)