NephyrS wrote:
It wasn't the listener who had to apply what was said to Health Insurance instead of Disability Insurance (an omission filled in by implication), but rather he explicitly stated that her health insurance would not cover her due to a pre-existing condition- an explicit untruth.
I thought he just said "insurance" not "health insurance"? Either way, though, my view of his story isn't dependent on that level of detailed scrutiny. Bottom line for me is that (a) his mother was very sick, (b) she was worried she couldn't afford to pay certain medical expenses (i.e. the deductible under her primary health insurance) as well as various living expenses because she was too sick to work, (c) her employer offered a supplemental disability insurance plan that would have covered those expenses, and (d) she was denied coverage by that plan because her illness was deemed pre-existing. The fact that the insurance plan under which she was denied coverage was a "disability" plan rather than a straight "health" plan just strikes me as a tangential detail that really has nothing to do with the point of the story - namely, that Obama was personally familiar with the stress and fear experienced by people in that kind of situation. Looking beyond that basic point and nit-picking the disability insurance vs health insurance detail seems to me like an example of people reaching for any possible hook to call him a liar and further justify their already-low opinion of him.
Like Nitefox said, "I knew what I was getting at. I wasn't trying to fool anyone. I was wrong in how I said things but it doesn't really change the meaning of the point I was stating."
Anway, I guess I'm just going to have to agree to disagree with the Glade consensus on this one.