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February 28, 2007

Unnecessary Lie of Omission

The poster child for the Healthy Kids Plan in Oregon apparently didn't tell the plan's proponents the whole truth about her child's death, nor did she tell the Legislature the whole truth. She claimed her daughter would not have died had she had health insurance to pay for medical tests that would have discovered how ill the toddler was. It now turns out that she withheld information about her daughter's condition from doctors for fear of being charged with child abuse, and that is likely what resulted in her daughter's death. What an unnecessary mess – it casts doubt on the need for the plan by implying no real case could be made to support it.

Sarah Bacon told the Legislature, "I believe my daughter didn't get all the tests she needed to keep her with us, because she didn't have insurance. It's that simple." Bacon has insisted that it was the failure to diagnose a virus that lead to her daughter's death. But what really happened was that her daughter died from undiagnosed bleeding in the brain that resulted from head trauma. Doctors had no reason to even check for that because Bacon had not told them the girl had hit her head on a chair when she fell while walking.

It's too bad Bacon's story wasn't checked out before she became one of the primary human faces of the proposal. I am certain many children have suffered for lack of health insurance and they would not necessarily be difficult to find. You don't need a dead child to prove that the plan is a good idea.

Posted by Becky at February 28, 2007 09:38 AM