An Ohio Bosnia For Hillary

A poor uninsured pregnant woman denied and killed by the country's heinous health care system. First, Hillary tells us, the woman's baby dies. Then, just because she didn't the required $100 fee, the heartless greed-monsters that represent US healthcare let the woman die, too.

Hillary has told the tale time and again to highlight the need for her solution, but:

The woman, Trina Bachtel, did die last August, two weeks after her baby boy was stillborn at O’Bleness Memorial Hospital in Athens, Ohio. But hospital administrators said Friday that Ms. Bachtel was under the care of an obstetrics practice affiliated with the hospital, that she was never refused treatment and that she was, in fact, insured.

“We implore the Clinton campaign to immediately desist from repeating this story,” said Rick Castrop, chief executive officer of the O’Bleness Health System.

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 ....

That's the story as told by a paper with some influence in the Dem world, a little rag called the New York Times, hometown paper of the state Hillary now represents in Congress. Unlike the story about the Clinton's $10+ million a year income, this one didn't make the front page, but it will make its rounds.

If the health care problem can't be illustrated without lies, how is it that we need so costly and risk a solution?

This is not another Tuzla story, since Hillary wasn't at the hospital like she was at the Bosnian airport dodging sniper bullets in her mind. But if the Clintons are as savvy as we're told they are, they should understand that the American public doesn't exactly rush to defend their credibility, so they should commit to fact-checking every element of every speech she gives.

That they don't have rigorous fact-checking isn't so much a function of running a bad organization -- we're told, after all, that they are the best political organizers going -- it is, rather, evidence that they just don't care much about the truth. The ends justify every means, so if they trash a hospital's reputation and turn a dead woman and baby into something they're not, it simply doesn't matter.

Meanwhile, check out this picture and remember it well, because if Laura Bush ever runs for president, this is the sort of experience she will tout as her foreign policy bona fides.

Yeah, but Laura Bush is a normal person, so I don't think that's going to happen.

hat-tip: memeorandum