In today's world of 24/7 news, news and political blogs, video replay capabilities, and many other ways to record and disseminate information - AND also to refute false information - one would think Hillary Clinton would know enough not to recite stories without first verifying they are true. What is wrong with her campaign staff that they do not confirm information before Hillary begins to parrot it? First, there was Hillary' version of her Bosnia trip which amounted to revisionist history. Now, Hillary is getting called out on a story she has been telling about a preganant woman she heard about who lacked health insurance. It turns out that the facts are not as Hillary has been stating. Is Hillary just plain stupid or is she so desperate to beat Obama that she feels that she needs to make up compelling stories? I do not get it. All she is doing is making herself look like a liar and anything but presidential. Here are some highlights from the New York Times ( http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/05/us/politics/05woman.html?_r=1&ei=5090&en=7824b4f8ea3b363d&ex=1365134400&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin):
Over the last five weeks, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has featured in her campaign stump speeches the story of a health care horror: an uninsured pregnant woman who lost her baby and died herself after being denied care by an Ohio hospital because she could not come up with a $100 fee. 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, which Mrs. Clinton had first heard from a Meigs County, Ohio, sheriff’s deputy in late February.
“We reviewed the medical and patient account records of this patient,” said Mr. Castrop, the health system’s chief executive. Any implication that the system was “involved in denying care is definitely not true.” Although Mrs. Clinton has told the story repeatedly, it first came to the attention of the hospital after The Washington Post cited it as a staple of her stump speeches on Thursday.
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