Apparently Mr. Obama touched upon his mother’s death and lack of health insurance in his infomercial last night.
A little more than a year ago Mr. Obama ran an ad featuring his mother’s death from cancer.
From the Obama campaign and the Chicago Tribune:
Obama’s mother in new ad
by John McCormick
Posted September 20, 2007
Sen. Barack Obama is using an image of his deceased mother in a new campaign ad that seeks to make the case that he is the best qualified to bring change in the way the nation delivers health care.
Called “Mother,” the 30-second ad briefly shows a picture of Stanley Ann Dunham, who died of cancer in 1995. The image includes a very young Obama in her arms….
It’s an anecdote Obama has been recently field testing on the campaign trail. This is how he told the story of his mother’s illness during a recent campaign stop in Santa Barbara, Calif.:
“I remember my mother. She was 53 years old when she died of ovarian cancer, and you know what she was thinking about in the last months of her life? She wasn’t thinking about getting well. She wasn’t thinking about coming to terms with her own mortality. She had been diagnosed just as she was transitioning between jobs.
And she wasn’t sure whether insurance was going to cover the medical expenses because they might consider this a preexisting condition.
I remember just being heartbroken, seeing her struggle through the paperwork and the medical bills and the insurance forms. So, I have seen what it’s like when somebody you love is suffering because of a broken health care system. And it’s wrong. It’s not who we are as a people.” …
Like most of Mr. Obama’s life, the details about his mother’s death are sketchy and often contradictory.
But just going on the few details we have been permitted, some questions arise.
From the Washington Post:
Though Obama Had to Leave to Find Himself, It Is Hawaii That Made His Rise Possible
Sunday, August 24, 2008; Page A22
… But now [Obama] was drawn back to Hawaii to say goodbye to his mother. Too late, as it turned out. She died on Nov. 7, 1995, before he could get there.
Ann had returned to Honolulu early that year, a few months before “Dreams From My Father” was published. She was weakened from a cancer that had been misdiagnosed in Indonesia as indigestion. American doctors first thought it was ovarian cancer, but an examination at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York determined that it was uterine cancer that had spread to her ovaries.
Stan had died a few years earlier, and Madelyn still lived in the apartment on Beretania. Ann took an apartment on the same floor, and underwent chemotherapy treatments while keeping up with her work as best she could. “She took it in stride,” said Alice Dewey, chair of the University of Hawaii anthropology department, where Ann did her doctoral dissertation. “She never complained. Never said, ‘Why me?’”
As the article notes, Stanley Ann Dunham Soetero developed cancer in 1994 while in Indonesia (it was mis-diagnosed). She then moved to Hawaii where she died in 1995.
According to the article she was treated at the best cancer treatment center in the world, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. So so much for her lack of care.
Moreover, Sloan-Kettering often offers National Institute Of Health “protocols” where one gets treatment for free (even transportation is paid).
Did she try to get into one of these protocols. If not, why not? If so, what medical expenses did she have?
Apparently, Mrs. Soetero later received chemotherapy at the Straub Clinic in Hawaii. Straub claims to be Hawaii’s best health care organization, and may have also offered NIH protocols at the time, or have been part of the Sloan-Kettering protocol.
Obama has also at times claimed his mother was on food stamps at the time of her death. If that’s true, why wouldn’t she have been also eligible for Medicaid as well?
Also, according to the Washington Post article, Mrs. Soetero was “between jobs.” But also it states that she worked up to the time of her death.
If that is so, given that her daughter was being taken care of by her mother and Obama had long since left home, why did she need food stamps at all?
Furthermore, if Mrs. Soetero was having issues with insurance while she was dying, why didn’t Obama, a Harvard Law graduate, try to assist her instead of letting her deal with it by herself?
Also, one wonders why Mr. Obama didn’t get a better paying job to help his mother with her medical expenses — if only temporarily. He has often bragged that he could have taken jobs that would have given him outlandish figures.
And then there is the claim about Mr. Obama not being able to get to his mother before she died:
But now [Obama] was drawn back to Hawaii to say goodbye to his mother. Too late, as it turned out. She died on Nov. 7, 1995, before he could get there.
As the article notes, Mrs. Soetero died on November 7th, 1995. From all reports, such as those about his grandmother’s recent illness, Obama never went to Hawaii to see his mother in the several months before her death.
What was he doing instead?
In 1995 Barack was preparing for his Illinois State Senate race. In late summer he took time off to go around the country on a book tour for his “Dreams From My Father.”
On September 19th he launched his campaign in Chicago. In October he went on the “Million Man March.”
Where was Mr. Obama’s compassion then?
And if Mr. Obama will lie about his dying mother, is there anything he won’t lie about?
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