Obama Lied About Mother's Health Insurance Woes

Repeatedly during the 2008 presidential race, candidate Barack Obama told a story of his mother's battle with cancer and how she was denied health insurance coverage because her cancer was deemed a pre-existing condition before she had begun work for her current employer who provided a group health insurance plan for its employees. The tale of his mother's health insurance woes served as an argument for his ambitious, government-run health insurance plan. As with almost everything about his personal biography, however, the story was completely fabricated. His mother's health insurer in fact covered some of the best medical treatment available in the country at the time. Her insurance dispute was actually with CIGNA, the provider of a disability insurance policy also provided through her employer, and additional coverage she sought to cover for deductibles and expenses not covered by her group health insurance plan. Bryon York explains what Ann Dunham's biographer, New York Times reporter Janny Scott uncovered in her new book:

In January 1995 she left Indonesia to go home to Honolulu, where she was diagnosed with advanced uterine and ovarian cancer. She began a regime of surgery and chemotherapy.

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.

A dozen years later, her son turned her ordeal into a campaign pitch for national health care. But the story Obama told, Scott writes, was "abbreviated" -- the abbreviation was to leave out the fact that Ann Dunham had health insurance that paid for her treatment. "Though he often suggested that she was denied health coverage because of a pre-existing condition," Scott writes, "it appears from her correspondence that she was only denied disability coverage."

That's a different story altogether. One the president never told.

Dunham left it to her son, attorney Barack Obama, to handle her disability dispute with CIGNA. He was too busy with his community organizing to help the mother he had grown to despise. He not only didn't help her out with that issue, he refused to visit her as she lay dying in a hospital bed in Hawaii. The One then had the audacity to fabricate a lie about her illness and suffering to advance his health insurance reform cred in furtherance of his presidential bid. Has there ever been a more narcissistic, liar in the White House? His entire biographical narrative is built on a completely fabricated fairy tale (Bill Clinton's words) weaved by an anti-American terrorist ghost writer, Bill Ayers. God save us all.

UPDATE: I came across this little treasure from CNS News discussing a waiver the Obama administration gave CIGNA from the new Obamacare law:

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has granted waivers to 10 health insurance companies, including giants such as Cigna and Aetna and divisions of Blue Cross Blue Shield, from the requirements of the new health care law, also known as ObamaCare.

The waivers allow these companies to impose annual limits on the health coverage they provide to their employees. Under Obamacare, companies that do not get special waivers from the administration must phase out their caps on annual health-care benefits between now and 2014 when they must offer limitless annual benefits. The Obama administration began granting waivers to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act last September.

The health insurance company benefiting most from a special waiver from the Obamacare provision is Cigna Corp., which has 265,000 enrollees on its health plan. HHS approved Cigna a waiver on Sept. 26, 2010, allowing it to cap the health insurance benefits for those 265,000 employees.