Hillary Clinton caught lying about Hospital Story

After Bosnia here comes another Lie form Hillary Clinton.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

April 5, 2008

Ohio Hospital Contests a Story Clinton Tells

By DEBORAH SONTAG

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.

A Clinton spokesman, Mo Elleithee, said candidates would frequently

retell stories relayed to them, vetting them when possible. "In this

case, we did try but were not able to fully vet it," Mr. Elleithee

said. "If the hospital claims it did not happen that way, we respect

that."

The sheriff's deputy, Bryan Holman, had played host to Mrs. Clinton in

his home before the Ohio primary. Deputy Holman said in a telephone

interview that a conversation about health care led him to relate the

story of Ms. Bachtel. He never mentioned the name of the hospital that

supposedly turned her away because he did not know it, he said.

Deputy Holman knew Ms. Bachtel's story only secondhand, having learned

it from close relatives of the woman. Ms. Bachtel's relatives did not

return phone calls Friday.

As Deputy Holman understood it, Ms. Bachtel had died of complications

from a stillbirth after being turned away by a local hospital for her

failure to pay $100 upfront.

"I mentioned this story to Senator Clinton, and she apparently took to

it and liked it," Deputy Holman said, "and one of her aides said she'd

be using it at some rallies."

Indeed, saying that the story haunted her, Mrs. Clinton repeatedly

offered it as a dire example of a broken health care system. At one

March rally in Wyoming, for instance, she referred to Ms. Bachtel, a

35-year-old who managed a Pizza Hut, as a young, uninsured minimum-

wage worker, saying, "It hurts me that in our country, as rich and

good of a country as we are, this young woman and her baby died

because she couldn't come up with $100 to see the doctor."

Mrs. Clinton does not name Ms. Bachtel or the hospital in her

speeches. As she tells it, the woman was turned away twice by a local

hospital when she was experiencing difficulty with her pregnancy. "The

hospital said, 'Well, you don't have insurance.' She said, 'No, I

don't.' They said, 'Well, we can't see you until you give $100.' She

said, 'Where am I going to get $100?'

"The next time she came back to the hospital, she came in an

ambulance," Mrs. Clinton continued. "She was in distress. The doctors

and the nurses worked on her and couldn't save the baby."

Since Ms. Bachtel's baby died at O'Bleness Memorial Hospital, the

story implicitly and inaccurately accuses that hospital of turning her

away, said Ms. Weiss, the spokeswoman for O'Bleness Memorial said.

Instead, the O'Bleness health care system treated her, both at the

hospital and at the affiliated River Rose Obstetrics and Gynecology

practice, Ms. Weiss said.

The hospital would not provide details about the woman's case, citing

privacy concerns; she died two weeks after the stillbirth at a medical

center in Columbus.

"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. That brought it to the

attention of The Daily Sentinel in Pomeroy, Ohio, which published an

article on Friday.

Neither paper named the hospital or challenged Mrs. Clinton's account.

Politicians sit around the breakfast table every morning trying to

figure out what lies they can tell without getting caught.

--

Blattus Slafaly ? 3 7/8