On Thursday, Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN), one of the party’s more vocal Trump critics, attempted to blame the president for an infant supposedly dying “as a direct result” of losing his medical coverage. But after being hit by some quick fact-checks online, Omar issued a significant correction — or a significant partial correction, at least.
“A nine month old died as a direct result of Trump’s cuts to Medicaid and CHIP,” Omar tweeted Thursday linking to a report by The New York Times. “He is one of a million children to lose healthcare. Let that sink in.”
A nine month old died as a direct result of Trump’s cuts to Medicaid and CHIP.
He is one of a million children to lose healthcare.
Let that sink in. https://t.co/U4q8uXksKZ
— Rep. Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan) October 24, 2019
But as Twitchy and others online quickly pointed out, Omar apparently did not read very carefully the report she was using to bash Trump.
Most importantly, the nine-month-old boy did not die. Secondly, baby Elijah’s loss of medical coverage was simply the result of his mother failing to submit the proper paperwork in time, not the Trump administration’s “cuts to Medicaid and CHIP.” And even though his mother had not properly enrolled her child in coverage, the medical staff took care of the little boy anyhow.
Here’s how the Times’ report begins:
The baby’s lips were turning blue from lack of oxygen in the blood when his mother, Kristin Johnson, rushed him to an emergency room here last month. Only after he was admitted to intensive care with a respiratory virus did Ms. Johnson learn that he had been dropped from Medicaid coverage.
Elijah getting dropped from coverage, the Times notes in the third paragraph, was due to “an error that happened apparently because [his mother] didn’t respond quickly enough to a letter asking for new proof of income.”
The Times frames the situation in as dramatic a way as possible, but acknowledges that the mother’s failure to provide proof of income did not actually endanger the child. The medical staff quickly tended to her son.
The report also notes that with a little help in getting the proper forms in, Elijah and the rest of her kids are all covered (formatting adjusted):
For Ms. Johnson, Elijah’s stay at Texas Children’s Hospital led to an appointment with an enrollment counselor who helped her try to figure out what had happened. Trying to re-enroll her older children earlier this year, she was asked for proof of income and missed the 10-day window to provide it; that may be why Texas dropped Elijah from Medicaid even though he qualified because he was a baby. All of her children are now re-enrolled.
Hours after getting called out for spreading “fake news,” Omar finally issued an extremely brief correction addressing the key fact she got wrong: “almost died*” she wrote in a reply to her initial post.
almost died*
— Rep. Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan) October 24, 2019
As for the Times’ attempt to make the Trump administration and some states look bad for tightening up on the Medicaid enrollment process, the report also acknowledges that the main reasons we’re seeing a drop in Medicaid enrollment are more people moving onto better employer-provided coverage, states cracking down on fraud, and illegal aliens being afraid of their illegal status coming to light:
Some state and federal officials have portrayed the drop — 3 percent of enrolled children — as a success story, arguing that more Americans are getting coverage from employers in an improving economy. But there is growing evidence that administrative changes aimed at fighting fraud and waste — and rising fears of deportation in immigrant communities — are pushing large numbers of children out of the programs, and that many of them are now going without coverage. The declines are concentrated in a minority of states; in other places, public coverage has actually increased. …
Some of the states that saw the largest increases in uninsured children — like Tennessee and Texas — were those that created rules to check the eligibility of families more frequently or that reset their lists with new computer systems. In some states with large immigrant populations like Florida, doctors and patient advocates report growing concern among parents that signing up their children (who are citizens) may hurt their own chances of getting a green card or increase their risk of deportation.