Thursday, October 30, 2008

About Obama’s Mother And Medical Bills | Sweetness & Light

Very interesting discussion of Obama's claims surrounding his mother's passing. This has nothing to do with his mother but everything to do with Obama not being able to tell the truth and constantly put his political aspirations above all else. Note the timeline of events at the bottom. "She died on November 7th 1995, before he could get there." More like "after he didn't bother to go see her because he was too busy pushing his book and starting his political career with William Ayers"

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?

About Obama’s Mother And Medical Bills Sweetness & Light

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! This story is low even by Republican standards. Watching Fox News Obama was criticized for sexism because he showed footage of Sarah Palin winking. But running articles about a candidate's dead mother is OK. It never ceases to amaze me the hypocrisy of negative campaigning.

And please don't say that it's Obama's fault for bringing his mother into the campaign. McCain makes his war record a theme of his campaign. In the last couple of weeks some radical journalists have published stories that questioned whether McCain was ever tortured, and another story about McCain dissing the man who saved his life in Vietnam who just recently died.

These stories never made it into the mainstream media and, in my opinion, they don't merit such attention. But any sludge will do if it sticks to Obama.

I think I should do a content analysis of this very weblog and see how many posts have something to do with demonstrating that McCain's policies are better than Obama's over just bashing Obama.

This is the Republican line. They have nothing to offer. Their policies have been discredited soundly by any measure, quantitative or qualitative. McCain offers more tax cuts, 100 years of war and status quo for Americans who have seen their wages stagnate since the Reagan Administration. (To be fair, Obama's plan isn't a radical departure, but at least it's a departure). So they spend their time with racist insinuations (which I haven't seen on this blog, to your credit) and fear mongering (which I have seen).

Frnakly, if that's the best you got I really hope we see a President Obama. After reading so much conservative balderdash I'm almost tempted to vote for Obama myself.

Author said...

First, stop pretending you weren't going to vote for Obama anyway.

Your feigned disgust at anything McCain has been clear from the start.

Second, this story isn't about Obama's mother - it's about Obama and his inability to tell the truth.

No one disputes that things get in the way of doing the things we should in life - but you don't get to pretend those things didn't happen in order to further your political career at your own dead mother's expense.

She had GOOD care and he CHOSE not to go see her because he had more important things to do.

That's fine, but you don't get to change the story later because it gets you more votes - THAT'S the point.

Anonymous said...

So that negates all of the people who have lousy care, or have good care and are financially ruined.

I don't know or care about Obama's mother. Regardless, it doesn't qualify him or disqualify him for president. Same holds true for McCain leaving his wife for a younger woman. It has nothing to do with it.

When it comes to personal lives, unless we know the intimate details we don't know what happened and shouldn't presume to know.

Just as you have no information as who I will vote for. The fact that the McCain campaign has to steep itself in slime does not automatically qualify Obama for office. Having disdain for McCain's positions (which I will admit to) does not mean I have to accept Obama when there are other alternatives that support my positions better.

Anonymous said...

"...does not mean I have to accept Obama when there are other alternatives that support my positions better.
Nader, LaRiva, or...McKinney? (snicker)