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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (14677)	3/17/2010 9:24:05 PM
From: Brumar89	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

A woman championed as the Obama administration's emblem for health care reform does not have to choose between her home and her health, according to officials at the Ohio hospital where she is being treated. With a self-reported annual income of about $6,000, Natoma Canfield is a prime candidate for financial aid in the form of Medicaid - the federal health care program for low-income and disabled people - or charitable assistance. And the Cleveland Clinic said it has no intention of putting out a lien on Canfield's house - or letting the billing process interfere with her treatment. "It appears that I think she'll be fine," said Lyman Sornberger, the hospital's executive director of patient financial services. "By nature of the fact that she was not early on rejected by either program, that's a key indicator that she will most likely be eligible." Canfield was stunned last month when she unsealed a handwritten letter from none other than the president himself. She had written to Obama before the holidays to request that he count her as a "statistic," as she put it, among the scores of Americans unable to afford health insurance - but she never expected to get a response. .... Obama traveled to northeast Ohio on Monday to champion Canfield's plight as proof of why health care reform is so urgently needed. The self-employed cleaning worker also stole the spotlight at Tuesday's White House press briefing, when she was mentioned several times by press secretary Robert Gibbs as a make-or-break vote on Obama's health care overhaul loomed over lawmakers. ..... Like any patient who walks through the Clinic's doors without medical coverage, Canfield was immediately assigned an adviser to help assess whether she was eligible for financial aid, hospital officials said. ........ Canfield said Tuesday that she had just met with her adviser in her hospital room before undergoing a round of chemotherapy in the afternoon. "I will have to apply for Social Security disability and then something called Medicaid," she said. Asked whether she had understood what Medicaid was, she said: "I heard of it but I didn't really realize what it was." ..... cbsnews.com Its one thing for this emotionally distraught woman to not know she qualified for SSI and medicaid, but its hard to believe the Obama WH people wouldn't have advised her to check to see if she qualifed under an existing program. Heartless bastards.