Hat Tip to Michelle Malkin.
This new video (featuring 11 year old Marcelas Owens) is currently the featured clip on the Senate Democrats’ YouTube site. It’s health insurance-bashing demagoguery and dumbing-down and cowardice and child exploitation at its worst. Watch what the Senate Democrats have entitled “Young Health Care Activist Discusses Health Insurance Industry Abuses.”
……Owens’ grandmother and family have been longtime activists for the left-wing, single-payer advocates of the Washington Community Action Network ……the boy and his grandmother traveled to Washington with sponsorship from the Astroturf lobbyists of the Health Care for America Now outfit, which characterized Marcelas as an “insurance abuse survivor.”
http://michellemalkin.com/2010/03/12/harry-reid-hides-behind-11-year-old-kiddie-shield-marcelas-owens/
Another ‘victim’:
Natoma Canfield is a cancer patient at Cleveland Clinic, which happens to be one of the best cancer treatment centers in the country, if not the world. Obama used her as a prop during his ObamaCare propaganda speech in Strongsville yesterday. “I’m here”, he said, “because of Natoma.” Canfield wrote Obama over her plight:
Via Gateway Pundit:
Natoma Canfield is 50 years old. She was diagnosed with cancer 16 years ago. She quit her job or was laid off 12 years ago. She has reportedly held odd jobs cleaning homes the last few years. Natoma was paying $5,000 a year for her insurance but dropped it after it went up to $8,000. She wrote president Obama in December to tell him about it. She was worried she might lose her home that her parents built. Some people might say she’s lucky to still have a home after losing her job 12 years ago. Others say she’s lucky that today’s regulations weren’t around when she was diagnosed with cancer at 34. The current government officials don’t believe breast exams are necessary until much later in life.
http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/03/it-figures-obamas-rally-prop-natoma-canfield-is-getting-financial-aid-is-patient-at-top-us-cancer-center-wont-lose-home/
There’s a few problems with Canfield’s story:
Natoma Canfield, the cancer-stricken woman who has become a centerpiece of President Obama’s push for health care reform, will not lose her home over her medical bills and will probably qualify for financial aid, a top official at the Cleveland medical center treating her told FoxNews.com.
Though Canfield’s sister Connie Anderson said her sibling is afraid she’ll lose her house and Obama warned at an Ohio rally Monday that the patient is “racked with worry” about the cost of tests and treatment, she is already being screened for financial help.
Lyman Sornberger, executive director of patient financial services at the Cleveland Clinic, said “all indications” at the outset are that she will be considered for assistance.
“She may be eligible for state Medicaid … and/or she will be eligible for charity (care) of some form or type. … In my personal opinion, she will be eligible for something,” he said, adding that Canfield should not be worried about losing her home.
“Cleveland Clinic will not put a lien on her home,” he said.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/03/15/clinic-cancer-patient-wrote-obama-lose-home-aid/
From the Cleveland Clinic website:
Cleveland Clinic is committed to providing world-class care to all patients regardless of ability to pay. Under its policies, Cleveland Clinic provides financial assistance to patients who do not have insurance coverage and who have family income levels up to four times the Federal Poverty Income Guidelines.
Patients who have insurance but still need assistance in payment for their medical services are also eligible for consideration.
This program is in addition to any patient’s entitlement to free hospital care under the Ohio Hospital Care Assurance Program and includes Cleveland Clinic physician services. In the year 2005, the cost of hospital and physician charity care provided by the Cleveland Clinic Health System exceeded $100 million
http://my.clevelandclinic.org/about/community/uncompensated.aspx
No one at the ObamaCare rally seemed to notice that Canfield is already receiving the best health care in the world; the availability and efficiency of which, would be a different proposition under socialized medicine.
All this is reminiscent of the Graeme Frost hoax pulled by the Democrats back in 2007.
Graeme Frost, the 12-year-old child severely injured in a terrible car accident that also left his sister with permanent disabilities. Graeme Frost was propped up by Democrats desperate to avert the president’s veto of S-CHIP legislation, which would have massively expanded the government health care entitlement.
……The boy gave the Democratic radio address last week, written for him by Senate Democrat staffers, and made several Beltway lobbying appearances with top Dem leaders.
……The family is not as destitute as the MSM has made them out to be. ….Why (would) a “working family” in need of government-subsidized health care can afford to send two children to a $20,000-a-year-private school.
……the family claims to be raising their four children on combined income of about $45,000 a year. “Bonnie Frost works for a medical publishing firm; her husband, Halsey, is a woodworker. They are raising their four children on combined income of about $45,000 a year. Neither gets health insurance through work.”
What the article does not mention is that Halsey Frost has owned his own company “Frostworks”,since this marriage announcement in the NY Times in 1992 so he chooses to not give himself insurance. He also employed his wife as “bookkeeper and operations management” prior to her recent 2007 hire at the “medical publishing firm”. As her employer, he apparently denied her health insurance as well.
His company, Frostworks, is located at 3701 E BALTIMORE ST. A building that was purchased for $160,000 in 1999…
…One has to wonder that if time and money can be found to remodel a home, send kids to exclusive private schools, purchase commercial property and run your own business… maybe money can be found for other things…maybe Dad should drop his woodworking hobby and get a real job that offers health insurance rather than making people like me (also with 4 kids in a 600sf smaller house and tuition $16,000 less per kid and no commercial property ownership) pay for it in my taxes.
Links to information:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1907687/posts
http://michellemalkin.com/2007/10/08/graeme-frost-and-the-perils-of-democrat-poster-child-abuse/
http://michellemalkin.com/?s=marcelas+owens
The Dems are not beneath using children as an ObamaCare human shield. If they succeed in circumventing the Constitution with the “Slaughter Rule” and manage to inflict this socialist health care nightmare on this country, future generations of children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren will be saddled with trillions of dollars in debt, Marcelas Owens included.