Hospital: Ohioan who has become Obama’s calling card on health care won’t lose her home
By Meghan Barr, APTuesday, March 16, 2010
Clinic: Ohioan championed by Obama will keep home
CLEVELAND — Hospital officials say there’s little validity to a claim by the Obama administration that an Ohio cancer patient would have to choose between her house and her health insurance. Fifty-year-old Natoma Canfield wrote to President Barack Obama last year to request that he count her as a “statistic” among Americans unable to afford health insurance.
Since then, she has emerged as his emblem on the plan to overhaul health care. She battled breast cancer years ago and now has leukemia.
She has an annual income of about $6,000 and is a prime candidate for Medicaid or charitable assistance.
And her hospital, the Cleveland Clinic, says it has no intention of putting out a lien on Canfield’s house. A clinic official notes “there are other hospitals that will do that.”
