Bury the health care bill in an Obama t shirt.

Byron York marvels at a president who stoops to this kind of tasteless emotional manipulation. The democrat crowd laughs uneasily because even they don’t quite know how to take the president’s story.

(around 8:25 in this 10:46 video)

I got a letter — I got a note today from one of my staff — they forwarded it to me — from a woman in St. Louis who had been part of our campaign, very active, who had passed away from breast cancer. She didn’t have insurance. She couldn’t afford it, so she had put off having the kind of exams that she needed. And she had fought a tough battle for four years. All through the campaign she was fighting it, but finally she succumbed to it. And she insisted she’s going to be buried in an Obama t-shirt.

Personally, I think the story is so strange that I tend to doubt it is even factual. And, beyond that, there is something downright disturbing about encountering a public figure who is not actually embarrassed at the idea of such an expression of such macabre personal devotion. Obama’s vanity is without limit or reason.

—————————————–

Donald Boudreaux retorts:

What have we here? A politically successful multimillionaire stands idly by as an employee – who seems also to have been Mr. Obama’s personal acquaintance – dies because she cannot afford proper medical care. Then Mr. Obama deploys this tale of woe not to apologize for, or to criticize, his own refusal to help a friend but, instead, to criticize millions of other people who never met this woman for their refusal to be forced into ponying up for her health insurance.

——————————————-

UPDATE 2/7:

Tom Maguire links a story explaining that the lady actually did have catastrophic health coverage with a high deductible but skimped on routine exams.