NYT: White House Refuses to Deny Obama Lied About His Mother Not Having Health Insurance On Her Deathbed

Obama may be a big fat liar, but he is a big fat liar who got Obamacare passed. Author Janny Scott in her book A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother refutes President Obama's claims about his dying mother's health insurance.

(NY Times) — The White House on Wednesday declined to challenge an account in a new book that suggests that President Obama, in his campaign to overhaul American health care, mischaracterized a central anecdote about his mother’s deathbed dispute with her insurance company.

During his presidential campaign and subsequent battle over a health care law, Mr. Obama quieted crowds with the story of his mother’s fight with her insurer over whether her cancer was a pre-existing condition that disqualified her from coverage.

In offering the story as an argument for ending pre-existing condition exclusions by health insurers, the president left the clear impression that his mother’s fight was over health benefits for medical expenses.

But in “A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother,” author Janny Scott quotes from correspondence from the president’s mother to assert that the 1995 dispute concerned a Cigna disability insurance policy and that her actual health insurer had apparently reimbursed most of her medical expenses without argument.

Ms. Scott took a leave from her job as a reporter for The New York Times to write the book and has not returned to the staff.