The pro-Clinton blogosopher defends Clinton's story debacle

For the record, via Taylor Marsh (I think she may live here in Las Vegas too, yikes!), Big Tent Democrat has what seems to be the officially unofficial response by the pro-Clinton blogosphere to the whole health care story debacle.

BTD's first argument seems to be that nobody really knows who or what HIllary Clinton was talking about.

Senator Clinton NEVER mentioned the hospital nor named Ms. Bachtel, she merely related the story, as politicians, even the sainted Barack Obama, often do.

For most of the rest of the post, BTD insinuates that the hospital was just covering it's ass.

Why would the hospital seek to INJECT itself into this story? Frankly, the Hospital's DESIRE to become a part of this story is simply bizarre and suspicious.

This is typical Clinton-style politics -- when someone catches you clowning around, you fire back at them. It's actually not a bad approach, and sometimes it's justified. (A good example was when Chelsea shot down the person who asked about the impact of the Lewinsky affair on her mother's credibility. That question was totally off-base, and her response was brilliant.)

The problem that BTD has is that I'm not sure he wants to pick a fight with the hospital system that provided care to this woman. At least on paper, they don't look to be the vile murder-by-spreadsheet type of health care providers that ail our system. From the O'Bleness annual report:

The O’Bleness Health System remains true to our charitable mission of serving all who seek our healthcare services — regardless of their ability to pay for care. Our not-for-profit organization reinvests any excess revenue in enhancements to our services, staff and facilities. Although we have no shareholders, we have many stakeholders — first and foremost our patients, their families, area residents who someday may need our care, our employees, our medical professionals, our volunteers, the many communities we serve and even the economy of our region.

These guys certainly don't seem to be the enemy in the health care fight. Again, I'm not an expert here, so I'm open to being corrected, but O'Bleness Health Systems sure doesn't seem like CIGNA to me.

So why did they want to inject themselves into the story? WaPo's Kornblut:

Hospital officials said they demanded the Clinton campaign stop repeating the story because there are some people in their community who erroneously believed it referred to O'Bleness Health System.

Seems reasonable to me. Of course, there's always the possibility that the woman went to a different hospital in a neighboring county and was turned away there. She could could have been turned away from a hospital in Argentina, for that matter. So I can't say for certain that she didn't go anywhere else; nobody can. My point: it's hard to prove a negative (as far as I know).

Let's focus on what we do know, however. The woman did receive treatment from O'Bleness, who was her health care provider. She did have health insurance. So while I can't say conclude with certainty that she did not try an area hospital, I can say it doesn't seem very likely -- she was already receiving care from O'Bleness.

Actually, if I had to bet, I'd guess that the biggest factor in the woman's death was access to a trauma center, which is a real problem for rural Americans.