Obama’s health-insurance story unraveling a bit?

Byron York did some digging into one of Barack Obama’s oft-told anecdotes about health insurers — and discovers that the facts differ significantly from Obama’s version. Obama explained his passion for health-insurance reform during the presidential campaign as a product of the fight his mother endured to get coverage for her eventually-fatal illness, uterine and ovarian cancer:


“I remember in the last month of her life, she wasn’t thinking about how to get well, she wasn’t thinking about coming to terms with her own mortality, she was thinking about whether or not insurance was going to cover the medical bills and whether our family would be bankrupt as a consequence,” Obama said in September 2007.

“She was in her hospital room looking at insurance forms because the insurance company said that maybe she had a pre-existing condition and maybe they wouldn’t have to reimburse her for her medical bills,” Obama added in January 2008.

“The insurance companies were saying, ‘Maybe there’s a pre-existing condition and we don’t have to pay your medical bills,’ ” Obama said in a debate with Republican opponent Sen. John McCain in October 2008.

True story, or fabrication? As with most personal anecdotes turned into political arguments, it’s a little of both, according to York and a recently published biography of Obama’s mother. Ann Dunham did fight with an insurer to cover medical costs in the last months of her life, a battle that Obama himself waged on her behalf. However, the policy in question was not for health insurance, but for disability coverage that Dunham wanted to cover her deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses — which, to be fair, were not insignificant. Dunham took a job in 1994 with Development Alternatives, which provided her with health insurance, and dispatched her to Jakarta to work with an Indonesian ministry focused on women’s issues. She began to suffer severe abdominal pain, which an appendectomy did not cure, and worried that she had something much worse. Dunham went back to Hawaii in 1995, where the proper diagnosis was made.

According to Dunham biographer Janny Scott, a New York Times reporter, Dunham’s health insurance covered her illness without question:

That is the time during which Obama says his mother battled insurance companies to cover her illness. But Scott, who had access to Dunham’s correspondence from the time, reveals that Dunham unquestionably had health coverage. “Ann’s compensation for her job in Jakarta had included health insurance, which covered most of the costs of her medical treatment,” Scott writes. “Once she was back in Hawaii, the hospital billed her insurance company directly, leaving Ann to pay only the deductible and any uncovered expenses, which, she said, came to several hundred dollars a month.”

Scott writes that Dunham, who wanted to be compensated for those costs as well as for her living expenses, “filed a separate claim under her employer’s disability insurance policy.” It was that claim, with the insurance company CIGNA, that was denied in August 1995 because, CIGNA investigators said, Dunham’s condition was known before she was covered by the policy.

Dunham protested the decision and, Scott writes, “informed CIGNA that she was turning over the case to ‘my son and attorney, Barack Obama.’ ” CIGNA did not budge.

In September 1995, Dunham traveled to New York for an evaluation at the renowned Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Returning to Hawaii, she began a new course of treatment. She died in November.

Dunham’s death was tragic, of course, and Obama might have a valid reason to be angry at CIGNA for refusing to cover some of the expenses. But if Scott gets the story right, then Dunham’s health insurer actually did meet its obligations to cover the portion of Dunham’s bills for which it was liable. She didn’t face the prospect of paying the entirety of her bills without coverage, but the portion that her insurer wouldn’t have covered anyway — without the ability to earn a paycheck, which would have been daunting enough.

The anecdote in its actual form would make a good case for someone who wanted to reform disability coverage. It looks like Obama exercised some significant poetic license into an argument that health insurers are evil corporations that need government control in order to fulfill their contracts.

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8:36 AM | 0 comments

Trade deficit rises in May, exports down 0.5%

Wreckovery Summer II appears to be coming right on schedule. The Commerce Department announced this morning that the trade deficit hit its highest level in almost three years, $50.2 billion, up from $43.6 billion in April. Exports fell 0.5% while imports ramped up a whopping 2.6%, which will deliver a big hit to Q2′s GDP number:


The U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, through the Department of Commerce, announced today that total May exports of $174.9 billion and imports of $225.1 billion resulted in a goods and services deficit of $50.2 billion, up from $43.6 billion in April, revised. May exports were $1.0 billion less than April exports of $175.8 billion. May imports were $5.6 billion more than April imports of $219.4 billion.

The year-on-year numbers were worse:

The goods and services deficit increased $8.1 billion from May 2010 to May 2011. Exports were up $22.8 billion, or 15.0 percent, and imports were up $30.8 billion, or 15.9 percent.

Recall that the Fed’s second round of quantitative easing (QE2) weakened the dollar in part to boost exports. One might argue that without QE2 the trade deficit might have been worse, but it certainly didn’t make it any better. Also, don’t forget that the tsunami in Japan and higher oil prices were supposed to limit imports in the short run, which either didn’t happen or covered up an even worse performance.

Reuters got caught by surprise, to no one’s surprise:

The U.S. trade gap widened much more than expected in May as a jump in oil prices helped push imports to the second highest level on record and exports fell slightly from April’s record high, a U.S. government report showed on Tuesday.

The trade deficit totaled $50.2 billion, the highest since October 2008, and well above the consensus estimate of $44.0 billion fromWall Street analysts surveyed before the report. …

The politically sensitive trade gap with China jumped more than 15 percent to $25 billion. U.S. companies imported $32.8 billion of goods and services from the Asian powerhouse during May, but exported just $7.8 billion worth to that country.

In worrisome sign for U.S. exports to China in June, recent data out of Beijing shows the country’s imports that month were the weakest in 20 months.

Reuters also reports that the report will “likely prompt analysts to scale back their estimates of second-quarter economic growth.” I’d be happy if it causes Reuters’ economists to start paying attention to actual economic indicators when making those estimates.

Imports usually hit the bottom line of the GDP report hard. If imports go up again in June as sharply as May, we may well drop into negative GDP growth territory in the Q2 economic report.

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8:00 AM | 0 comments

Obamateurism of the Day

It’s not too often, as Bryan Preston notes, when a president tips his hand this early on what his tax policy will be if re-elected. Thankfully, Barack Obama is a special kind of President — the one who doesn’t get his brain engaged before his jaw when speaking extemporaneously, emphasis mine:


“So, when you hear folks saying ‘Well, the president shouldn’t want massive job killing tax increases when the economy is this weak.’ Nobody’s looking to raise taxes right now. We’re talking about potentially 2013 and the out years.”

Bryan writes:


Re-elect me to get massive job killing tax hikes when I’m a lame duck and you can’t do a thing about it. That right there is a sure-fire winner of a message. If you want to morph into Walter Mondale circa 1984.

Romney’s campaign has already begun to circulate this, as has the RNC. Don’t be surprised to see this clip featured in a lot of commercials in 2012.

It’s worth taking a moment to get serious and make a couple of points. First, on the trajectory we’re seeing now, we’re not going to be in better position in 2013 than we are now; we’re going to be lucky if we manage to avoid a recession this year, and next year it’s probably unavoidable. Second, if investors are looking at massive, job-killing taxes in 2013, why would they bother to invest now at all? They’ll just have this much time to shelter their income and capital — which is exactly what will happen. It’s similar to what’s happening with capital investors and ObamaCare now. Killing the jobs will be well underway long before the tax hikes arrive in 2013.

Got an Obamateurism of the Day? If you see a foul-up by Barack Obama, e-mail it to me at obamaisms@edmorrissey.com with the quote and the link to the Obamateurism. I’ll post the best Obamateurisms on a daily basis, depending on how many I receive. Include a link to your blog, and I’ll give some link love as well. And unlike Slate, I promise to end the feature when Barack Obama leaves office.

Illustrations by Chris Muir of Day by Day. Be sure to read the adventures of Sam, Zed, Damon, and Jan every day!

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7:37 AM | 0 comments

Breaking: Pro-Assad demonstrators attack US, French embassies

Despite the shooting of hundreds and perhaps thousands of unarmed demonstrators, the Obama administration has refused to call for Syria’s Bashar Assad to resign, as Obama and his team did with Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh, whose forces reacted much less violently to protesters. The Obama administration, especially Hillary Clinton, insisted that they see Assad as a “reformer,” an assumption they didn’t bother to extend to those actual US allies in the region. Today, Assad repaid the Obama administration for its, er, patience:


Witnesses say Syrian pro-government protesters have attacked the U.S. embassy compound in Damascus, causing damage.

The witnesses said the protesters smashed windows and raised a Syrian flag on the compound on Monday. They also wrote anti-US graffiti referring to the U.S. ambassador as a “dog,” the witnesses said.

Attacking embassies is a favorite tactic of Assad. In 2006, a pro-Assad mob stormed the Danish and Norwegian embassies to protest the publication of the Mohammed cartoons, doing a significant amount of damage. A few months ago, a Wikileaks release confirmed what everyone already knew, which is that the Assad regime planned and conducted the attack, and then pulled the mob out after their purposes were met.

Why target the US embassy? Assad needs to divert attention from the growing unrest in his country, and he needs an easy villain for the distraction. The Obama administration’s weak pressure on Assad to deliver “reform” gets an unmistakable answer at the same time. It’s a win-win for Assad, and another humiliation for Obama.

Over at the French embassy, the protests got even more serious:

A witness in Syria’s capital says security guards at the French Embassy have fired into the air to drive back protesters taking part in two-pronged demonstrations outside the French and American embassies in Damascus.

Obama had better act quickly to make clear to Assad that this kind of attack won’t be tolerated. The last thing Obama needs now is yet another parallel to the Carter administration in a sacking of a Middle East embassy by “students.” Unfortunately, the White House appears somewhat distracted by yet another effort to push the nominally-US-aligned Saleh out of power:

An aide to President Barack Obama met yesterday with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh in Saudi Arabia and asked him to fulfill a pledge to step down after more than three decades in power.

Saleh is in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, recovering from injuries sustained during a June 3 attack on his presidential compound in Sanaa, Yemen. John Brennan, Obama’s assistant for counterterrorism and homeland security, urged Saleh “to fulfill expeditiously his pledge to sign the GCC-brokered agreement for peaceful and constitutional political transition in Yemen,” an e-mailed statement from the White House said, referring to a proposal by the Gulf Cooperation Council.

Saleh probably needs to go, but his departure will be a blow to our efforts against al-Qaeda. Meanwhile, Assad is a real threat to the region, especially in Lebanon, thanks to his alliance with Iran and his funding, supply, and direction of Hezbollah. There seems to be a very misguided prioritization taking place in Obama’s foreign policy, where we have attached ourselves to our enemy and thrown one-time friends under the bus.

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8:53 AM | 0 comments

Rebound “not happening” in 2011

So says Lakshman Achuthan, co-founder of the Economic Cycle Research Institute. Why should we believe him? For one thing, Achuthan was one of the few who predicted a global industrial slowdown near the beginning of the second quarter. For another … er, isn’t it rather obvious by now?

And actually, the news gets worse from there:

With so much riding on – and priced into – an economic and earnings rebound in the second-half of the year, Achutan not only pours water on that, but ups the ante by saying he cannot rule out slumping into another recession in 2012. “You have a 4/10ths rise in the unemployment rate over the last 3 months. That doesn’t happen in an economy that is reviving or firming or gaining steam,” he explains.

Further, Achutan says “It’s a growth rate slowdown and that’s what the market really cares about. Recessions and recoveries, that’s old news.”

So assume for a minute that Achutan is right (again) and that the growth rate just stumbles along at 1-2%, jobs growth doesn’t materialize and the various Purchasing Managers Indexes stall. Achutan says that will have a devastating effect on earnings and stocks. “Profit growth is pro-cyclical, meaning it can’t disconnect from the economy” he explains, adding that “you’ll have profits. But if you’re interested in if they’re getting better or worse, it’s going to be really tough for them to get better on a sustained basis in a growth rate cycle slowdown.”

Contra Yahoo, it wasn’t exactly rocket science to predict a slowdown in early May. By that time, we had already seen a significant jump in weekly initial unemployment claims as well as a series of negative economic indicators. Job creation had obviously slowed as energy and food costs skyrocketed. Predicting a slowdown after those indicators — and the fact that the preliminary annualized rate of growth in Q1 had already been announced at 1.8% (later adjusted to 1.9%) with just 0.6% real final sales — made a prediction of anything but a summer slowdown Pollyannish at the very least.

At this rate, we’ll be lucky to see a growth rate of 1% in Q2. We may not be far from negative numbers on GDP, and that may mean a recession earlier than even Achuthan predicts. Given the significant slowdown between Q1 and Q2 based on the economic indicators we’ve already seen, it seems very unlikely that we’ll get 0.6% annualized increase in real final sales in the quarter just completed, and it’s not far from there to red-ink numbers.

Speaking of red numbers, the Christian Science Monitor’s Stefan Karlsson explains why Friday’s horrid jobs report is actually worse than it looks:

First of all, previous increases in payroll survey employment were revised down.

Secondly, average weekly earnings fell 0.3% as hourly earnings were flat and the average work week fell 0.1 hours. However, at the same time earnings for May was upwardly revised by 0.1%.

And thirdly, the other survey, the household survey, showed a decrease in employment by 445,000. As a result, the entire increase in the employment to population ratio since the cyclical low of 58.2% has been wiped out. The 0.9 percentage point drop in the unemployment rate since then is thus entirely the result of [people] dropping out of the work force, discouraged by the shortage of jobs.

Consumer economies don’t provide rebounds when people are leaving the workforce. We are not going to see a sudden growth period in 2011, and we’re likely to slide back into recession earlier than most people think.

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7:52 AM | 0 comments

Bachmann leading in Iowa?

Bachmentum? Michele Bachmann’s momentum continues in her birth state of Iowa, according to a new poll of likely caucus voters by the Iowa Republican. Bachmann surpasses Mitt Romney by four points, while another Minnesotan has also muscled up the ranks:

Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann has surpassed former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney in a recent Iowa poll that was conducted by TheIowaRepublican.com. With Bachmann now leading in Iowa, Romney has fallen to second place, but he is still well ahead of third place finisher Tim Pawlenty, who has overtaken Herman Cain my a miniscule margin.


Bachmann received support from 25 percent of likely Iowa caucus goers in the poll, while Romney is backed by 21 percent. The poll also shows signs of growth for former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, who now stands in third place in statistical tie with Herman Cain at just under nine percent. Ron Paul finished with six percent, Newt Gingrich with four percent, Rick Santorum with two percent, and Jon Huntsman rounded out the field with one percent. …

While Bachmann’s lead over Romney is just within the margin of error, the poll’s cross tabs show how much momentum her campaign has generated in Iowa. Her favorability is ten points higher than Romney’s, who had the second highest number in that category. Her unfavorable figure is 14 points lower than Romney’s, giving her a stellar plus 65 favorability margin. Her numbers suggest that Bachmann has found a very effective way to appeal to caucus goers.

The candidate with the next highest favorable/unfavorable spread is Tim Pawlenty with a plus 48 margin. Like Bachmann, Pawlenty is well liked by caucus goers, but he has found it more difficult to move his overall polling number in the state. Pawlenty finished in third place in the poll by edgeing out Herman Cain, 8.8 percent to 8.5 percent. Pawlenty’s numbers have increased since the Des Moines Register poll showed him at 6 percent. A major factor could be the radio and television ads the Pawlenty campaign has been airing in the past few weeks.

Romney’s decline shouldn’t surprise too many people. He pulled out of the Ames poll next month, which is both an early test of the field and a fundraising opportunity for the state GOP. It’s not exactly shocking that enthusiastic Republican caucus goes might have gotten a little less enthusiastic about Romney after his withdrawal. I would expect a finish for Romney in Ames — and likely in January’s real caucus — at third or less.

Bachmann has to score well in Iowa and in the Ames poll to keep the media spotlight and political momentum. So does Pawlenty, who has gotten more aggressive in the state. His standing increased a little in this survey, barely edging out Herman Cain for third place, but he’s going in the right direction. Pawlenty needs a second place finish in January at a minimum to keep his presidential campaign viable, as New Hampshire will almost certainly belong to Romney. He has another four weeks until the Ames debate and straw poll to establish himself in his own backyard.

Still, the big questions for Bachmann and Pawlenty remain these: Sarah Palin and/or Rick Perry. If either or both get in the race before Ames, they could find themselves swamped out of the spotlight and the enthusiasm of caucus-goers.

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7:22 AM | 0 comments

The Sugar Daddy has hypoglycemia?

Margaret Thatcher distilled all the problems of central planning into this one quote*: “Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money.” Last night, Sarah Palin gave us a new version of the argument, saying that the sugar-daddy government — and President — has run out of sugar, and we need to cut off the supply of sucrose:


To paraphrase Hemingway, people go broke slowly and then all at once. We’ve been slowly going broke for years, but now it’s happening all at once as the world’s capital markets are demanding action from us, yet Obama assumes we’ll just go borrow another cup of sugar from some increasingly impatient neighbor. We cannot knock on anyone’s door anymore. And we don’t have any time to wait for Washington to start behaving responsibly. We’ll be Greece before these D.C. politicians’ false promises are over. We must force government to live within its means, just as every business and household does.

We can’t close our $1.5 trillion deficit overnight, but we must get as close as we can as soon as we can. Little nibbles here and there over 10 years (spun to sound like they’re huge budget cuts) aren’t anywhere near enough. I know from experience that cutting government spending isn’t easy. As governor, I made the largest veto cuts in my state’s history, and I didn’t make many friends doing it. But we will never recover, we will never get free of devastating debt, unless we make tough choices now. We don’t hear talk like this from leaders in D.C. or from those running for office because they say what they think we want to hear rather than what must be said.

We are in desperate need of real leadership, but President Obama’s solution to everything is to grow government by borrowing more money, spending more money, printing more money, and taxing our job creators. He once said that he “believes in American Exceptionalism…just as the Greeks believe in Greek Exceptionalism.” Well, the path he has us on will make us just as “exceptional” as Greece – debt crisis, stagnation, permanent high unemployment, and all.

As we approach 2012, there are important lessons we can learn from all of this. First, we should never entrust the White House to a far-left ideologue who has no appreciation or even understanding of the free market and limited government principles that made this country economically strong. Second, the office of the presidency is too important for on-the-job training. It requires a strong chief executive who has been entrusted with real authority in the past and has achieved a proven track record of positive measurable accomplishments. Leaders are expected to give good speeches, but leadership is so much more than oratory. Real leadership requires deeds even more than words. It means taking on the problems no one else wants to tackle. It means providing vision and guidance, inspiring people to action, bringing everyone to the table, and with a servant’s heart dedicating oneself to striking agreements that keep faith with our Constitution and with the ordinary citizens who entrusted you with power. It means bucking the status quo, fighting the corrupt powers that be, serving the common good, and leaving the country better than you found it. Most of us don’t see a lot of that real leadership in D.C., and it’s profoundly disappointing.

The mention of Greece should remind people that while we’re begging for more sugar from China and sovereign-wealth funds around the world, we’re also loaning sugar to Greece through the IMF. We’re bailing out a country that has so far struggled to change course and operate without deficits, while we’re failing to learn the lesson from their collapse. And this is the same government that ran three trillion-dollar-plus deficits in a row thanks to a massive uptick in spending, and insists that the problem is revenue.

The Obamas have fought a public battle against childhood obesity. It’s time that they start dealing with federal-government obesity. Time to cut off the sugar instead of accepting the idea that all we need is a trillion more donuts for government to finally start its diet.

* – It’s often rendered as “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money,” but that’s a paraphrase; it’s easy to see why the paraphrase is more often remembered.

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10:56 AM | 0 comments

Poll: What was the Obamateurism of the Week?

Time once again to flood the Internets and choose this week’s top Obamateurism! I’d call success finding just one choice in this poll, because I wouldn’t want to discount the difficulty. Just exercise your collective choosing rights, and we’ll eventually have a winner.


What was the Obamateurism of the Week (7/10)?
Dinner with Obama & Biden raffle marked down 40% to $3Obama says success is when people can "find a good job" and "pay the mortgage""The Internets""And certainly at the federal level where I do have influence, I can make sure that we make these adjustments without affecting people’s collective bargaining rights."
VoteView ResultsShare ThisPolldaddy.com


Previous 2011 “winners”:

Six references to tax breaks for “corporate jet owners” as reason budget isn’t balanced
Identifies wrong soldier as non-posthumous MoH recipient
“You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM; you don’t go to a bank teller.”
Uses restaurant as example of success of auto bailouts, closes two weeks later
Goes for 70th round of golf on Memorial Day
Obama botches toast to Queen Elizabeth
“Israel must be able to defend itself – by itself – against any threat“
WH gripes that immigration debate too often uses caricatures after Obama says, “Maybe they’ll need a moat.”
White House issues Earth Day proclamation, skips Easter
Can’t name a mistake at townhall in which he made three in one sentence
Accuses GOP of trying to hurt seniors after lecturing them not to demagogue on entitlement reform
“If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting 8 miles a gallon, you know, you might want to think about a trade-in.”
Obama accepts his transparency award in secret, no-press meeting
“War” first changed to “kinetic military action,” then “time-limited, scope-limited military action”
Obama telling people it would be easier to be President of China because “No one is scrutinizing Hu Jintao’s words in Tahrir Square.”
Obama tells group that there is a “subterranean” racially-based agenda in opposition to his presidency
Ferry for Americans in Libya comes three days late — and with a bill for passengers
WH says Obama not addressing Libya because of “scheduling issue“
After saying he hadn’t followed the Wisconsin issue, says Walker’s plan “seems like more of an assault on unions.”
Businesses have “obligation” to create jobs and “pay decent wages”
After losing verdict on first ever federal mandate to purchase private-sector product, accuses judge of “overreach”
Obama bogarts Newt Gingrich’s book title for his “Winning the Future” SOTU speech
2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner holds state dinner for man who has 2010 winner under house arrest
After telling Boehner and McConnell that “there will be plenty of time to campaign for 2012 in 2012,”announces March start to re-election bid
“I really want to figure out a way where I can spend more time outside of Washington listening and learning and engaging the American people.”

Got an Obamateurism of the Day? If you see a foul-up by Barack Obama, e-mail it to me atobamaisms@edmorrissey.com with the quote and the link to the Obamateurism. I’ll post the best Obamateurisms on a daily basis, depending on how many I receive. Include a link to your blog, and I’ll give some link love as well. And unlike Slate, I promise to end the feature when Barack Obama leaves office.

Illustrations by Chris Muir of Day by Day. Be sure to read the adventures of Sam, Zed, Damon, and Jan every day!

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10:09 AM | 0 comments