During his Presidential campaign and in the campaign to institute Obamacare Barack Obama repeatedly referred to his mother’s inability to get health insurance and having to fight for payments.
“For my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.”
August 2009
“I will never forget my own mother, as she fought cancer in her final months, having to worry about whether her insurance would refuse to pay for her treatment,”
(emphases mine)
“My Mother, who was self-employed, didn’t have reliable healthcare, and she died of ovarian cancer. There probably is nothing modern medicine could have done about that, it was caught late and thats a hard cancer to diagnose. I do remember the last six months of her life, insurance companies threatening that they would not reimburse her for her costs. And her having to be on the phone in the hospital arguing with insurance companies when what she should have been doing is spending time with her family.”
There is a problem with this.
A book by Janny Scott, “A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother,” discloses that Ann Dunham was not denied health insurance or payment for her cancer treatment.
Dunham was denied only disability insurance, based on the terms of the contract. Obama has most definitely allowed people to think that his mother was denied payment for her treatments.
Robert J. Blendon, a professor of health policy and political analysis at Harvard, said that if an alternate narrative about Ms. Dunham’s dispute had been discovered during the 2008 campaign “people would have considered it a significant error.” He added: “I just took for granted that it was a pre-existing condition health insurance issue.”
What grates on those of us in the health care profession is the constant and dishonest haranguing of insurance companies by disingenuous people like Barack Obama. The insurance company- Cigna in this case- was only honoring the terms of the contract as contracted by Dunham’s employer.
And what grates us even more is the sheer dishonesty of Barack Obama. And that dishonesty pervades the entire administration.
“As Ms. Scott’s account makes clear, the president’s mother incurred several hundred dollars in monthly uncovered medical expenses that she was relying on insurance to pay,” Mr. Papas said. “She first could not get a response from the insurance company, then was refused coverage. This personal history of the president’s speaks powerfully to the impact of pre-existing condition limits on insurance protection from health care costs.”
No it doesn’t. Ann Dunham wasn’t denied health care coverage.
What I find curious is that Obama apparently had a chance to challenge the denial of the disability claim and punted.
After several months, Cigna denied the claim. Ms. Dunham then requested a review, writing to Cigna that she had turned the case over to “my son and attorney, Barack Obama,” Ms. Scott wrote.
Ms. Scott said in the interview that she did not turn up documents to suggest that Ms. Dunham had a similar dispute with her health insurer, which she did not name. She said she could not determine from the documents she viewed whether Mr. Obama, then a lawyer in Chicago, had in fact petitioned Cigna on his mother’s behalf.
The White House does not dispute the veracity of Scott’s account.
But what kind of guy uses his mother’s death to score cheap political points?
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.
Obama will do anything to get what he wants he doesn’t care what he does or who gets hurt he only thinks of one person HIMSELF….Look what he did to get himself elected in every race he was in………….
Is there any evidence that Barack Obama ever provided any kind of financial assistance to his mother or to his aunt or to his brother, none of whom were as financially well off as he was?
I’m curious about that, because I’ve been getting the distinct impression that although essentially he received a free college education and lots of other financial assistance worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, apparently he is so stingy, so selfish and so self-centered that apparently he has never provided any kind of financial assistance to anyone, and certainly not to anyone in his own extended family, They live in poverty, while he lives like royalty, never making any effort to improve the quality of life of any of his relatives. Instead of spending his own money to help members of his own family, he wants us, the taxpayers, to help out his family, right? If that is true, he has to be a real creep and a slimy low-life.
Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack and Michelle Obama have shown repeatedly that they are [extremely] immoral and extremely dishonest people, and yet other Democrats respect, admire and love them, from which one must conclude that other Democrats are [extremely] immoral and dishonest, also, and that they admire and love liars and con artists, also.
I don’t know how our two cultures can continue to coexist. Those slimy low-lifes are adversely affecting and dragging down everybody else not just in this country, but on this entire planet, also.
All Democrats, aka, all Progressives are an embodiment of all of that which is evil. Those evil phonies, hypocrites and con artists take an immoral, disingenuous position on every issue. I’ve become convinced of that.
Have you noticed that Democrats, aka, Progressives, aka, Liberals, aka, Socialists [never] accept [any] responsibility for the consequences of their outrageous misbehavior? Those chronic and pathological liars [always] try to shift the blame onto somebody else, and those liars [always] conjure up screwy rationales (excuses) which reinforce their screwy delusions. They are really, really despicable people, utterly void of any semblance of a conscience, imho.
If you disagree, you are a Communist and an hermaphrodite of questionablr progeny. 🙂
Narcissist loons do that
I heard an interview with Janny Scott the other day. She said that Ann Dunham had made a claim for living expenses, when she returned to Hawaii. At that time she was already sick, not working AND living with her parents. So it seems Dunham wanted Cigna to pay for living expenses she didn’t have, living with her parents. Her medical expenses, were in fact, paid. It would seem that the one thing Obama did inherit was his scam artist ways.
It is also notable that Obama did not rush to his mother’s side when she was going through cancer treatment at Sloan-Kettering. Instead, he continued on with his life until just a few shorts weeks before her death. This does not surprise me. In his book, Obama never mentions going back to visit his grandparents once he left to attend Occidental College in California. Nor did he return after Columbia, a two year stint as a community organizer or his days at Harvard. During his campaign, he made a big deal about visiting his sick grandmother (only to throw her under the bus) but that seems to be the first time he had visitied her since he left Hawaii when he was 18.
Brian, no, Obama has never seemed to help any of his family, including his aunt who is currently living off the taxpayer dime, or his 1/2 brother who lives off a dollar a day, although he is worth millions. As a U.S. Senator, his tax records show that his donations consisted of only giving to Jeremiah Wright, Jr.’s church. As he earned six figures, his grandmother continued to live in the same small apartment he was raised in.
What kind of man whould lie about his mother’s illness and her insurance? The same kind of man who has put more work into keeping his past a true secret than he has in taking care of the nation he was elected to serve. The same kind of man who would play golf when SEAL Team 6 was lifting off on the mission to kill Bin Laden. The same kind of man who has attended over 40 fundraisers this year alone, compared to G.W. Bush’s 3. The same kind of man who would lie to the American people on national TV saying 80% of Americans want tax hikes to continjue to fund his insanity.
@retire05:
I think we saw the same interview, retiro5.
I also heard the White House spin: Obama never mentioned MEDICAL insurance when he spoke about her last days and bills.
Well, what is the obvious implication when you say:
Yup, not her HEALTH insurance companies.
Just her insurance companies.
But why would she, he or anyone expect any other insurer to ”pay for her treatment?”
Anyway, he is now excusing his statements by bringing up how long ago it was….years ago.
Gosh!
He was only a baby, a mere 35 years old at the time!
Also he was a lawyer.
13 years later it sure fit his narrative to say it with enough ambiguity that the American people felt sorry for him and his mom with regard HEALTH care.
One more example of Obama’s empty frame.
You fill in the blank and you think he and you agree with each other…..foolishly, as it turns out.
@Nan G:
The presidency of Barrack Hussein Obama, Jr. shows how brilliant David Axelrod is. He took a man, with no practical experience in the real world, who had a shady past (Obama’s Columbia roommate was a drug dealer from Pakistan), who had sat in the church of a racist black man that would have cratered the career of anyone else, whose shady realestate deals, connections with the corrupt ACORN and Tony Rezko would have been a game changer of any other candidate. Axelrod managed to divert any criticism and turn it into a “race” thing. And stupid white people voted for a man they though would finally absolve the sin of slavery.
Axelrod also knew that he couldn’t use Obama’s actual record to run on, so he created the “Hope and Change” slogan where voters could project onto it anything they wanted. It had as much meaning as “I Like Ike.” nevermind why you like Ike. Ask 100 people what “hope and change” means and you would have gotten 100 different answers; jobs, better living, more restitutions paid, no more war, closing Gitmo, the reasons are as numerous as the voters.
But now Obama has a record that everyone can look at, and although I have no doubt he will garner 98% of the black vote, he is losing Hispanics and the independents. He cannot win without the independents, but they see that none of the campaign promises are being kept, except for Obamacare that they did not want, we are still losing soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, now we are in Libya and Yemen, unemployment is not going down to acceptable levels, our debt is choking us, jobs are not being created and Obama and Axelrod are beginning to look more and more like Thelma and Louise with each passing day.
I once read how Axelrod insisted that Obama stand in front of a mirror, for hours a day, and practice speechifing. Axelrod hired speech coaches, and the best young speech writers he could find. Obama was trained to read glorious speeches from a teleprompter, but you can’t teach someone to be articulate and an orator without a teleprompter, which shows when Obama goes off speech.
Obama is an empty suit, a figure head for those, like Valerie Jarrett, who are actually in control of our White House. He is notoriously late for meetings, short tempered and leaves meetings after a short time telling others to “work it out.” While his minions sat in the communications room in the White House, watching and listening as SEAL Team 6 took off for Abattabad, Obama hit the green. This event, as much as any other, shows how disconnected Obama really is from the workings of his office. And it shows.
With respect to morals, have you ever noticed that Democrats, aka, Progressives, aka, Liberals, aka, Socialists [never] try to elevate themselves. Rather, instead, they try (and too often succeed) in bringing the rest of us down to their level, using slimy attorneys and slimy, liberal, activist judges to decree that their perverse behavior should be decreed as acceptable? Attorneys and judges are, collectively, the single most destructive element in this country. They are now doing more harm than good, twisting our laws and the purposes of our Bill Of Rights and our Constitution to get their perversions of those documents to serve their incredibly sick, slimy and evil agendas, much to the detriment of the majority of other people. Those insufferable creeps think that it’s cute whenever they can subvert our laws and flagrantly abuse their authority, proof of their prowess as judges and attorneys.
liar. liar PANTS on fire..time to put the liar out…IMPEACHMENT..there is overwhelming evidence to IMPEACH this idiot,. What do you expect from an NPD..America..you know there is still oil flowing out of that alleged “plugged hole in the gulf!” Yes..Smile America,,Screwed AGAIN.
A scumbag, that’s who.
All the above is correct.
Obama has proven to be an empty suit.
All through his administration he has had toadys send up public ”trial balloons,” to see if we will swallow this or that….yet.
Remember his idea of forcing veterans to pay for their medical insurance?
Trial balloon.
Remember when Sarah Palin coined the term ”death panels” to describe Obama’s version of nationalized health care panels?
A toady of Obama has suggested we end our lives EARLY in Obama’s latest trail ballon!
Jennifer Rubin:
The media, if aware of this story, would simply have suppressed it like all the other negative stuff. Hell, I’ll bet more than one reporter probably did know. Obama was selected by the media to win, just as McCain was selected by the media to lose.
And if somehow this deception had become widely publicized, it wouldn’t have made any difference. Soetoro would still have been elected.
The typical voter is a low-information voter. That’s why the ridiculous sound bites, blatant misrepresentation and character assassination are used so much – they work quite well on people who are not really paying attention. A little over 52% of the public voted for this creature despite the abundant evidence that was out there about what sort of government could be expected should he take office. When you think about it, the Obama campaign was actually absurd to any rational observer. You’d have to be an utter dunce to fall for a bunch of empty promises and a thinly-whitewashed past of radicalism and anti-Americanism. Well guess what — more than half the voters really were that stupid. And that’s a problem. They aren’t much smarter now – it’s just that their big mistake is in the process of blowing up in their faces.
What will cut through all the lying propaganda and message control in the end, is the very real misery that has been inflicted. People can no longer ignore something once it’s being ground into their faces on a daily basis. In the end the lies are exposed not by the mainstream media, not by alternative media, not by politicians; they are exposed by the crashing failure of all the promises that were made. A majority of the public refused to educate themselves, now they pay the price. That’s what it takes to get their attention.
Who else?
Where was it stated by Barack Obama that the coverage Ann Dunham was denied was specifically for medical procedures?
I would suggest that if you are terminally ill, and your insurance company has refused to make good on your disability insurance because they’ve decided your problem relates to a preexisting condition, you might also be experiencing a certain anxiety concerning insurance payment for your medical procedures.
There was a time when it wasn’t terribly uncommon for people to have their insurance coverage for medical procedures summarily ceased on such a basis. How long ago was that?
Greg, the two first two quotes specifically quote Obama saying the insurance compmany refused to pay for treatment. What could “treatment” possibly mean to you, other than medical treatment?
@Wm T Sherman, #14:
What the first quote says that she had to argue with insurance companies about coverage for medical treatment. The topic of preexisting conditions may well have come up in that context. Given the denial of disability insurance payments on that basis, it hardly seems improbable. The quote doesn’t say that they didn’t ultimately pay for medical treatment.
Regarding the second quote, I imagine she was worried.
People are predisposed to view such events through a political lens. Obama no doubt is. In this case, he was also likely to have been predisposed to see things from the patient’s point of view. It probably left a deep impression.
@Greg:
arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment,
Obama put across the message he chose, and he never sought to clarify a thing. Nor did he act on her behalf, apparently. Nor did he put aside his campaign to be near her as the end came.
@DrJohn:
Which campaign would that be?
Stanley Ann Dunham (November 29, 1942 – November 7, 1995).
Overlap with Obama’s career and his mom’s illness:
From 1994 to 2002, Obama served on the boards of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago.
______________________
Having been through this exact same thing myself I can say, a child, a grown child, does not put his/her life on hold to watch mom die.
We visit.
We sit in the room and pray.
We talk.
But the last thing a mom wants (any mom I have known) is to have her child quit all their plans and dreams and stay by her side.
So I understand Obama’s coming and going while his mom got sicker.
What I don’t appreciate is his intentional conflation between her actually GREAT coverage for her cancer with her other disability request for ”living expenses she did not have.
I miss Pookie…..
@Aye:
4. In 1995, Obama began campaigning for a seat in the Illinois Senate. Among his earliest supporters: Rezko. Two Rezko companies donated a total of $2,000. Obama was elected in 1996 — representing a district that included 11 of Rezko’s 30 low-income housing projects.
@Nan G:
I spent the last 48 hours of my father’s life by his side.
I promised my mother the same but her ventilation tube was removed without notification and she passed without any of her kids with her, and she did want them there. That bothers me a great deal.
@Nan G:
So the obvious question is – when did he see her dying in bed arguing with insurance companies? Her disability claim was refused in August of 1995.
If she should have been spending time with her family, where was her family? And since she was ill, why didn’t her family go to her? And if this bothered Obama so much, why didn’t he do something as a lawyer? Why wasn’t her family helping her?
http://luckybogey.wordpress.com/2009/07/21/aarp-a-big-donut-hole-with-acorn-sprinkles/
http://isayobayousay.com/2010/03/21/what-youre-doing-is-working.aspx?view=threaded
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/22/earlyshow/main4539871.shtml
What the hell?
@drjohn:
No where in Obama’s book, does he talk about being at her side “watching” her on the phone with insurance companies. As a matter of fact, no where in his book does he ever discuss returning to Hawaii for any reason. The fact of the matter is that Obama never went back, until Ann Dunham died. What he said during the campaign, and during the Obamacare battle, were for effect. Nothing less, nothing more, and just one more thing to add to his list of lies.
There is no “there” there. Obama is a fiction. A creation of David Axelrod. Obama was a clean cut and articulate black guy who wanted to enter politics and Axelrod was his go-to guy. During the campaign, I accessed, via the internet, all the bills Obama wrote while in the Illinois senate. His record was less than impressive. It was dismal. The left talks about all the good he did in the Illinois senate, yet the truth is that the head of the Senate actually took bills written by someone else and put Obama’s name on them to give him a little cred. He was their golden boy from the beginning, playing the games Chicago style.
Obama is a cold fish. His paternal grandmother didn’t want him (he is half white, you know and the tribe he is from is quite radical) so his white grandmother took him in, sent him to a tony prep school where they have “Kill Haole Day”, rode the bus while she bought him a car when he was 16-17, and he threw her under the bus just as he would any “typical” white person. And remember this, Obama’s book is Dreams FROM My Father, not OF My Father. Considering that Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was an avid Marxist, that should tell you all you need to know about what dreams Obama took FROM his father.
Dr. John, to sort of answer your question:
A guy like John Edwards:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1626498-2,00.html
And Kerry did not reject Edwards out of hand after hearing that (!)
These are the hollow men.
Can we all just agree that obama is the bestest, most smartest, brilliant, concerned, compassionate, always truthful, handsome, half black man in the whole world.///////////////////
His mother died ten years to the day before my Dad died. I was there to close his eyes in death and wake my Mom up so she could say goodbye before he died.
Now she is dying of congestive heart failure and liver failure.
One family member at a time please God.
My wife will have to stick around for a while, thank you very much.
here’s the thing, in a nutshell.
obama is not a stand up guy.
all of the evidence puts it in concrete, but any guy who is a guy’s guy, who goes by his word and expects the same from the guys around him, who doesnt demean others and gives respect, as well as demanding it,
saw through this scam of a man when he belittled “joe the plumber”
or when he tried to throw the police officer to the wolves in a petty local situation then had his “beer summit” where you saw the iconic photo of mister wonderful wondering out the door oblivious to his “friend” the professor’s need for help while the officer helps the man who tried to brand him a racist.
obama is a grifter, who uses people to advance his scam and disposes of people easier than toilet paper.
G.W. Bush is a man’s man. B.H.Obama is a lady’s man; i.e., gals consider him to be one of the girls.
@Brian: