Busybody
We are ALL BUSYBODY!
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- Jan 23, 2011
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WHY ISN’T ELIZABETH WARREN CHALLENGING HILLARY? Too much baggage for Hillary to exploit, including this:
Then there is the scandal-in-waiting concerning her sleazy scholarship while a law professor. She co-authored a highly-publicized study in 2005 that claimed that 54.5 percent of all bankruptcies have “a medical cause” and that 46.2 percent have a “major medical cause,” telling interviewers that those findings demonstrated the need for national health care. In fact, the proportion of bankruptcies caused by catastrophic medical losses is more like 2 percent. Her numbers were inflated by including “uncontrolled gambling,” “alcohol or drug addiction,” “death in family,” and “birth/addition of new family member” as “a medical cause.” In addition, spending as little as $1,000 in unreimbursed medical expenses over the course of two years — hardly unusual for a family — was enough to get a bankruptcy classified as “a major medical cause” even when the debtor himself or herself did not list illness or injury as a cause of the bankruptcy. A number of scholars have criticized the study as intentionally misleading.
Nor was this the only blot on Warren’s scholarship.
What’s funny is, if Hillary’s campaign raises issues like this, or the fake-Indian issue, or Warren’s asbestos-related legal work — all things that people on the right have mentioned, and the press ignored, for years — suddenly they will be Big Important Concerns.
Then there is the scandal-in-waiting concerning her sleazy scholarship while a law professor. She co-authored a highly-publicized study in 2005 that claimed that 54.5 percent of all bankruptcies have “a medical cause” and that 46.2 percent have a “major medical cause,” telling interviewers that those findings demonstrated the need for national health care. In fact, the proportion of bankruptcies caused by catastrophic medical losses is more like 2 percent. Her numbers were inflated by including “uncontrolled gambling,” “alcohol or drug addiction,” “death in family,” and “birth/addition of new family member” as “a medical cause.” In addition, spending as little as $1,000 in unreimbursed medical expenses over the course of two years — hardly unusual for a family — was enough to get a bankruptcy classified as “a major medical cause” even when the debtor himself or herself did not list illness or injury as a cause of the bankruptcy. A number of scholars have criticized the study as intentionally misleading.
Nor was this the only blot on Warren’s scholarship.
What’s funny is, if Hillary’s campaign raises issues like this, or the fake-Indian issue, or Warren’s asbestos-related legal work — all things that people on the right have mentioned, and the press ignored, for years — suddenly they will be Big Important Concerns.
