Remember Natoma Canfield, the lady Obama has referenced repeatedly? She’s the one who dumped her insurance because it became too expensive, and was then diagnosed with leukemia. She was supposedly going to lose her home because she needed cancer treatment.
Well, as with so many tear-jerking anecdotes — I think back to Al Gore’s woman who picked up cans on the side of the road — looks like it’s been embellished beyond recognition. She will not lose her home, and she’ll probably get financial aid, a Cleveland Clinic official tells Fox News:
“She may be eligible for state Medicaid … and/or she will be eligible for charity (care) of some form or type. … In my personal opinion, she will be eligible for something,” he said, adding that Canfield should not be worried about losing her home.
“Cleveland Clinic will not put a lien on her home,” he said.
Update: At The Economist, the Democracy in America blog fails to grasp the point made here. I did not represent this post as a proof that Obama’s legislation is wrong-headed. Such proof is already available elsewhere — for example, from the Congressional Budget Office and the actuary for Medicare and Medicaid. Nor is this post intended to prove that emotional appeals to rare hard cases seldom produce good universal legislation for the other 99 percent of the population.
The story merely demonstrates that if President Obama wants to use an emotional, heartbreaking, tear-jerking story as an excuse to alter the perfectly good health coverage that most Americans have, he needs to find a better emotional, heartbreaking, tear-jerking story in which the facts line up with his point.
