Posted by Jed Lewison on Sun Apr 6, 2008 at 1:37 AM Pacific

Roundup: A powerful -- but false -- tale from Hillary Clinton

Update on April 7, 2008: The AP is out with a report that partially vindicates some elements of Clinton's story. The essential facts from the story:

• The deceased woman "did in fact have health insurance when she and her baby died."
• At an earlier time, the woman was uninsured and did run up bills and was refused treatment at a clinic. It is not clear when that earlier time was.
• The woman went to an O'Bleness facility 30 miles to the north and was treated there.
• The woman's aunt felt "medical professionals did all they could to save" the woman.
• The woman's town has "about 2,000 residents and two medical clinics. One is affiliated with O'Bleness, the other is the Holzer Clinic, part of a nine-facility chain."
• The woman did not go to the local O'Bleness clinic and "''she would not have been turned away for lack of payment'' if she had sought treatment there."
• Holzer, the other clinic, says it has no records of the woman going to its clinic at any point in the last five years.

This is still a bit of a mystery, because the woman's aunt says she was refused care in her hometown, but both of the clinics there deny that to be the case.

I'll update if there is any further clarity.

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Major update: I've completely overhauled this post. The original is here.

OVERVIEW:

Saturday's New York Times described a horrifying tale told by Hillary Clinton in speeches over the past month:

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.

Just one problem: the story, intended to illustrate the need for a universal health care system, turns out  to have been false. According to Times, contrary to what Clinton had claimed, the deceased woman actually did have insurance and did receive care.

Moreover, according to the Times, the non-profit hospital where the woman was treated says the Clinton campaign had never contacted them to check if the story was true. For its part, the Clinton campaign has conceded it had never vetted the story, and accepted that the story was not true.

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THE GOOD NEWS: HILLARY CLINTON
DID NOT IMAGINE SNIPER FIRE:

Clinton was told the story by a local sheriff's deputy in Ohio, and her versions of the story seem to match the ones he shared with her and the media five weeks ago. So it's pretty clear that she didn't make anything up on her own, at least not anything major.

She did, however, spend one month of her campaign using a compelling but false story -- one that her campaign had never bothered to check -- as a key part of her argument for universal health care, which she says is the centerpiece of her campaign.

Sounds kinda' like the way Bush handled the imaginary WMDs in Iraq. Just because something makes a good story doesn't make it true. Just because something helps you make a case for a policy you support doesn't make it true.

If you're the president, you've got to check your facts.

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VIDEO:

You really have to watch Hillary Clinton tell the tale to get a sense of why the Times report will reinforce the hardening perception that she has a reckless disregard for the truth. Here is a CNN discussion of the affair, including a clip of her telling the story Friday night in Grand Forks, North Dakota:

Here's ABC Evening News from Saturday:

Can you imagine telling a story like that day after day after day and not checking the facts?

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MEDIA COVERAGE OF CLINTON'S HEALTH CARE TALE: