Washington Post: Clinton Told True Tale of Woe, Says Kin [Updated]
By SusanUnPC on April 7, 2008 at 9:05 PM in ABC News, Health Care, Hillary Clinton
UPDATE: Jake Tapper of ABC News has more — “Is Hillary’s Much-Maligned Hospital Story Fundamentally True?.” Tapper refers to our earlier story today: “The website NoQuarterUSA today pointed out what Holman’s full story was — and his full story is significant.” (We also credited ABC News with reporting the full story; ABC’s video is included in our earlier story.)
____________________________
The story that Hillary has told on the campaign trail is true — the tragic story about a pregnant mother whose baby died, and then she died, all because she was denied treatment early on. Hillary is vindicated. Will MSNBC report this? Will Fox News retract its biased report? Will the other news outlets that smeared her state that the Washington Post investigation proves the story? (For background, see our earlier story, “The REAL Trina Bachtel Story” by Big Kahuna — who acted like a real journalist, and dug to find out the story — and edited by Fleaflicker and me.)
This incessant dissection of everything that Hillary, her husband, her daughter and her surrogates say (as well as the constant pyschoanalysis of those relationships) is depressingly similar to the “hit jobs” on Al Gore in 2000 by reporters and pundits. Reporters — instead of reporting the facts, and the actual statements of the candidate — began looking for any remark, any anecdote, any story told in a campaign speech that they could pick apart, spin around, and try to give it the appearance of untruth. Most notable was that their “spinning” required that they NOT to quote Al Gore accurately. While it is good reporting to check the veracity of candidates’ remarks and stories, it is critically important that candidates be innocent of suspicion, and their statements not be spun until it is proven the candidate misspoke, exaggerated or told an outright lie.
On MSNBC today, Andrea Mitchell discussed the “hospital” story with Anne Kornblut, beginning with an assumption that Hillary told the story incorrectly. As she introduced Kornblut, Ms. Mitchell said the story was “NOT TRUE” (a wild assumption about a story not confirmed). Andrea Mitchell — and every other reporter who has reported with the same biased assumptions — must retract their assumptive statements and apologize to Hillary Clinton and the campaign. See also: Digby’s commentary on the Andrea Mitchell interview of Anne Kornblut in which Mitchell says that the story illustrates a “growing credibility gap” for Hillary. (Well, so much for finding out the facts before dishing up such devastating opinions.)
WASHINGTON POST: CLINTON TOLD TRUE TALE OF WOE, SAYS KIN
Excerpted remarks below:
By Anne E. Kornblut
The aunt of a young pregnant woman who died after a hospital told her she needed to pay $100 up front for care said in an interview on Monday that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has been telling the story accurately on the campaign trail — following claims by a different Ohio hospital that it did not turn the patient away.
For weeks, Clinton repeated an anecdote she heard in Ohio on Feb. 28 involving a young woman who lost her baby and later died because she lacked health insurance and did not have $100 to gain access to a nearby hospital.
But over the weekend, Clinton came under fire when officials at O’Bleness Memorial Hospital, after reading about her remarks, demanded that she stop recounting it because the patient, Trina Bechtel, was admitted there and did have insurance.
That part, it turns out, is true. But so is Clinton’s claim that Bechtel did not get care at another hospital that wanted a $100 pre-payment before seeing her, according to the young woman’s aunt, Lisa Casto. “It’s a true story,” said Casto, 53.
Casto added some details that were not part — or differed from — the Clinton anecdote: She said her niece had previously been in debt to a local hospital that later sent her a letter informing her that she could only be treated there in the future if she gave them a $100 deposit. At the time she went into debt to that hospital, Casto said, Bechtel was uninsured, though she later obtained health insurance and was insured at the time of her death.
…
But court records show that Bechtel had a civil judgment against her by the Holzer Hospital Foundation for the amount of $4,426, entered in 2002, which was repaid in 2005. A call to an official at Holzer Medical Center, which is run by the foundation, in Ohio was not immediately returned.
Casto said her niece, who suffered from preeclampsia during her pregnancy, did not seek care at the first hospital she when she fell ill because she knew she did not have the $100 out-of-pocket she believed she would need to be seen. Instead, she went to O’Bleness Memorial Hospital, where her baby was stillborn. Bechtel was later flown to Columbus and died there. She was 35.
Casto said she has been stunned by the amount of negative attention her niece’s story generated, and that she was sorry it had hurt the Clinton campaign. She was, and is, she said, a supporter. “Did I vote for Hillary?” she said. “You’d better bet I did.”
, the basis for the Best Motion Picture Nominee (Golden Globes) starring Brad Pitt.
, the novel by John Le Carre, a new motion picture starring Gary Oldman and Colin Firth.
by 
* (Included in the 
* 
.by David Fredosso who wrote 2008's 
- You'll have access to 18 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books, as well as ultra-fast Web browsing with Amazon Silk -- faster than iPad. Full e-mail and document access and a keyboard. Fire can transmit what is on your screen onto a connected TV or monitor without an accessory. It runs Flash (iPad doesn't). 
