Clinton Drops Health Insurance Nightmare Story After Facts Are Disputed
06 04 08 - 16:21
Hillary Clinton's campaign has said the Democratic presidential candidate is going to stop using a story about an uninsured pregnant woman in Ohio who died because a hospital turned her away.
Clinton has been telling the tale for about five weeks, and first heard it from Meigs County, Ohio, sheriff's deputy Bryan Holman, who was taped relaying the account to the New York senator.
"She was pregnant and worked for minimum wage. She went to the hospital, and the hospital told her she needs a hundred dollars up front, which she didn't have. So they billed her a couple of times for it, and she went back again, she didn't have a hundred dollars so they refused to see her," Holman said to an attentive Clinton.
Since then, Clinton has been repeating the story on the trail.
"We heard a story this morning in Palmeroy that, you know, really was tragic, about a young woman who worked in the pizza parlor, who was pregnant. Went to the hospital, not a hospital in Meigs County, they don't have one anymore, but in a neighboring county, and was asked for a hundred dollars before she could be seen," Clinton said, holding faithfully to the narrative.
Clinton then goes on to say, "Something went wrong with her pregnancy so she got rushed to the hospital and the baby died. Then she got airlifted to Columbus and 15 days later she died."
The part about Trina Bechtel's death is accurate. She died two weeks after her baby was still-born.
But officials at O'Bleness Memorial Hospital in Athens, Ohio, say Bechtel was being treated at an affiliated practice prior to her complications, and she did have insurance. They also expressed frustration that Clinton's campaign never called to verify the story, which the campaign said was being used to relay the treacherous state of health care in America.
Hospital officials have asked that Clinton stop telling the story, which the campaign agreed to do. It was not in a speech Clinton gave Saturday. In her accounts, Clinton did not ever mention the hospital by name.
Clinton campaign officials say they had no reason to doubt Holman, who said he made an honest mistake.
But coming on the heels of Clinton's story about landing in Bosnia under sniper fire - which turned out to be a gross exaggeration - Clinton's failure to fact-check has some questioning whether her inaccuracies could come back to haunt her.
Trustworthiness is an important characteristic to voters. A Gallup poll three weeks ago found that 67 percent of voters said John McCain was "honest and trustworthy" and 63 percent said the same of Barack Obama. Clinton's number was 44 percent.