“When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.”
Obama Used Faulty Anecdote in Speech to Congress
By JONATHAN WEISMAN
“WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama, seeking to make a case for health-insurance regulation, told a poignant story to a joint session of Congress last week. An Illinois man getting chemotherapy was dropped from his insurance plan when his insurer discovered an unreported gallstone the patient hadn’t known about.”
“‘They delayed his treatment, and he died because of it,’ the president said in the nationally televised address.”
“In fact, the man, Otto S. Raddatz, didn’t die because the insurance company rescinded his coverage once he became ill, an act known as recission. The efforts of his sister and the office of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan got Mr. Raddatz’s policy reinstated within three weeks of his April 2005 rescission and secured a life-extending stem-cell transplant for him. Mr. Raddatz died this year, nearly four years after the insurance showdown.”
“Obama aides say the president got the essence of the story correct. Mr. Raddatz was dropped from his insurance plan weeks before a scheduled stem-cell transplant.”
