The “Horror Story” That Wasn’t
By C. L. Smith aka “Leonidas”. C.L. Smith is a frequent right-of-center commenter here at The Moderate Voice and is a regular guest voice.
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Not long ago an account of a sawmill worker named John was reported suggesting that he was doomed to death due to no healthcare based on a NYT op-ed by Nicholas Kristof entitled “Are we going to let John Die?” Well seems like this was done without knowing all the facts.
Today, I did something that Pulitzer Prize-winning NYTimes columnist Nick Kristof apparently didn’t do: I talked to a spokesman at the Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, Oregon.
I called them up after OHSU’s Dr. Johnny Delashaw left a comment about Kristof’s piece spotlighting the horrible plight of John Brodniak, an Oregon man with a neurological condition that he says no one would treat.
She goes on:
1) OHSU is a safety-net hospital not far from where Brodniak lives. The hospital accepts all Medicaid patients and would not turn Brodniak away.
Okay, are you ready for Number 2?
2) Brodniak is a patient at OHSU — and has been a patient there for the past three weeks.
In other words, at the time Kristof’s article was published this past Sunday, Brodniak was already being treated and cared for by some of the best neurologists in the country!
And that doctor’s comment she refers to?
In all due respect, this patient did not come see me. If he had and needed care he would get it. Cavernous hemangiomas have a low bleed rate and are only excised if surgery is low risk. They rarely result in a catastrophic bleed. I have many paitients that are observed with cavernomas rather than surgically excised. Others undergo craniotomy for resection. I suspect this journalist is bending the facts because he has an agenda. The gentleman with the cavernoma is welcome to call my office and I will see him. I would ask that the writers of the New York Times write factual editorials rather than sensationalizing a story. You are not being helpful.
Johnny Delashaw
Professor of Neurological Surgery
Oregon Health Sciences University
Portland Oregon
Strange what passes for journalism these days.
50 Responses to “The “Horror Story” That Wasn’t”
“Strange what passes for journalism these days.”
Especially when Michele Malkin is the “journalistic” source…
Yeah I'm not crazy about ol' Michele Malkin as well. BUT there is enough holes to warrant more investigation into the situation.
I felt that the story just didn't make sense but in a quick search found nothing to refute the claims. I decided to bite my tongue and not say anything when I had no facts. Low and behold everything but the names was twisted beyond belief. Anyone want to lay any bets that those who tried to make political points with this mans illness won't make a correction about people who “can’t get the surgery done because they don’t have health insurance, and so are probably going to die”.
Everyone knows I'm not a fan of Malkin either, but this story not only seems valid and of interest, but also certainly had one quote which I think I'll be tucking away for future use as we debate the issues of the day.
“You are not being helpful.“
Oh, man. We could wear that one out in roughly one day of the 24 hour news cycle beast around here.
The most telling thing is that so many of these 'horror stories' turn out to be much different than originally reported. Even several anecdotes used by Obama have been shown to be less than factual.
I'm still convinced that our present healthcare system is highly flawed, but don't the proponents of 'change' realize how their own credibility is shredded when they can't come up with real stories of real people who would actually benefit from the kind of change they're advocating?
I'm confused. The following updates were posted by Kristof:
UPDATE: Several readers have asked how they can help or if there is a fund to help John. There isn’t any such fund, but with John and Esther’s permission I’m posting their mailing address: John and Esther Brodniak, 770 W Main St., Sheridan, OR 97378.
UPDATE 2: A couple of surgeons in Oregon have offered to help John without charge. It looks as if things will work out.
UPDATE 3: Several readers are asking about a Michelle Malkin account claiming that John was already receiving treatment at OHSU. John had one appointment there. He says he was told to give up, that they could not help him, and he was despairing when he told me about it; their version is different, that he was under “observation.” In any case, he says that after the column appeared, he suddenly got a series of phone calls from OHSU saying that they wanted to see him and could address his needs after all. In any case, it now appears that he will get treated, and other doctors are also offering him assistance.
Ah-oh………the duck is calling the lion out!
Actually I'm calling out the hospital. This smacks of covering your ass.
DD Could you post a couple of links to these updates. Tried a news search at http://www.abyznewslinks.com/ without any luck.
Here you go Rudi
http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/the…
Duck if you read the link it seems MM covered that. She claims she spoke with a spokesman from Brodniak who said John Brodniak had been a patient for 3 weeks. Not to mention all the other things wrong in the original report. Any hospital that takes fed money has to take medicare so the claim that no surgeon would take him on as a patient is absurd. Makes me wonder if Brodniak didn't decide he needed surgery himself and has been trying, and failing, to find someone to do what is not medically indicated for his condition. What the hell can just anyone call up the NYT with a sob story and they print with no fact check?
Good ol' Michelle… Quite the journalist, just the woman to go to for all the gnus worth 'no'ing.
So did Malkin actually get a story right? Lordy! It's a new day!
I see everybody is ready to accepts Michele's quote and the doctor's omniscience. I didn't read the original article nor did I read Michele's gotcha, but may I suggest that her response has its own glaring “agenda.”
“Up to 25% of patients will present with a hemorrhage. This is the most serious complication of a cavernoma. If the cavernoma does bleed, it usually, but not always, starts with a headache. The headache starts suddenly and may be followed by nausea, neurological problems or a decreasing level of consciousness. Sometimes a bleed may be very small and produce very mild or no symptoms at all.”
http://brainavm.oci.utoronto.ca/malformations/C…
of course, sometimes the bleed is not mild and does produce symptoms…… like
* Seizures
* Progessive or transient neurologic deficits
* Bleeding
* Headache
I find it interesting that a doctor can speak with such certainty about the prognosis of a patient he hasn't seen.
I really find it remarkable how everybody jumped the original article as an agenda filled piece of propaganda and the same people don't stop to think to check the propaganda values in Michele's reply. It appears journalism is lost along with objective thought.
Any hospital that takes fed money has to take medicare so the claim that no surgeon would take him on as a patient is absurd.
Brodniak has Medicaid, not Medicare, so he may have problems finding a neurosurgeon. Still you can generally find specialists that take Medicaid at the state medical school, which is where the surgeon who wrote the letter is at.
The whole story sounds kind of fishy though – Kristof blames the headaches on the hemangioma “leaking blood” into the brain. That would usually be an indication to throw the patient into a helicopter and get them to a neurosurgeon, so I'm assuming the ER CTs are showing no sign of bleeding. If he had an active bleed there is no way the ER would send him home.
Don't be discouraged, anyone who is even remotely sentient knows that Malkin is a partisan hack of the lowest order. Accuracy in reporting is waaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyy down on her list of priorities.
“Brodniak has Medicaid, not Medicare, so he may have problems finding a neurosurgeon. Still you can generally find specialists that take Medicaid at the state medical school, which is where the surgeon who wrote the letter is at.”
As I said they wouldn't be allowed to turn him away unless they didn't have anyone able to do treat him. Medicaid/medicare, if they didn't treat him they could lose all fed funding, and most docs don't get into the business to just watch someone die.
“Accuracy in reporting is well down on her list of priorities.”
MM is not what I would call a journalist, not even close, but out of these two reports you feel that hers shows partisan hackery? Now who had the factual errors? Misrepresented the ability to get treatment? Stated that there were NO doctors in the state that would take medicaid who could treat him. The list goes on and on. Partisan hack fits someone else much better this time.
I must be misunderstanding something. MM says Brodniak has been a patient at OSHU for 3 weeks and she also says his doctor there, Delashaw, says Brodniak never called him? I mean, huh? I'm obviously missing something because no one else here seems to be bothered by this seeming contradiction.
“Delashaw, says Brodniak never called him? “
Delashaw is not and was not Brodziak's doctor. You seem to have misunderstood the timeline. Delashaw was spoken with and excerpted to contradict that there were no doctors that would treat Brodniak because he was on medicaid. Delashaw was stating that he would of excepted Brodniak as a patient and also revealed the “treatment” is more often observation than surgery for his ailment. It was later found that Brodniak had been a patient at the same hospital, not of the same doctor.
Malkin is not my favorite blogger either, she did however do one thing the NY Times reporter did not do, contact the OHSU. I don't call her a great reporter, just a better one than Nick Kristof on this item.
Just read more closely, EElis has it correctly.
Okay, I understand the sense of what was in the excerpts now. I have to add, though, that in another comment you suggest that other people jumped to believe Brodniak's story without having all the facts, when clearly you have done the same thing by apparently accepting Michelle Malkin's post as “the real facts” even in the face of Nicholas Kristof's updates, and despite the fact that Malkin has never demonstrated a concern for truth in her entire career. I don't know how you can just take her word as definitive with that kind of track record.
The good thing about all this is that Brodniak is now going to get the care he needs — which in itself refutes the notion that he was telling a “sob story.”
You can try to use this story to push an agenda for or against health care reform, but honestly one person's experience is rather irrelevant anyway. So I don't view this as a health-care related story. It is about journalism.
The only thing worth commenting on about this story is that the original reporter apparently didn't do any fact checking before publishing, such as contacting the hospital. I can understand if it's just a person story that the reporter wanted to tell one its own merits. But obviously this story was told with the intention of contributing to a public debate about health care, in which case it was irresponsible that the reporter didn't try to double-check the facts. Although it clear that some of the original story was not true, it's not clear how much fabrication there was (I'm not inclined to take Malkin's word for it regarding her conversation with the hospital), but that's not the point. Even if it was entirely true, the reporter should have made sure of it before publishing. Saying, “Well, I didn't check the story, but it still turned out to be mostly true anyway” is pretty lame. So all of the argument over what the facts are miss the point: the facts should have been known before the story was published, not discovered afterward.
That's a hell of an excuse for using her as a source for arguing that the original story was wrong, Leonidas. There's no virtue in calling the OHSU if you in turn accept what you're told — as Malkin obviously did — without question. She could have contacted Brodniak to confirm what she had been told by Delashaw and/or others at OHSU, but she did not.
Horror stories are an awful way to decide public policy. Not only do the stories not do justice to the complexity of our health care system, they often don't even do justice to the complexity of the individuals' circumstances. Look at this case: even deciding whether the reporter did her job turns out to be quite complicated.
“Even several anecdotes used by Obama have been shown to be less than factual.”
Whether in government, in academia (political “climate” science), or in the media (“crusader 'journalism'”), blatant or latent misstatement of facts (commission or omission) aren't and shouldn't be something to quibble about, so long as the right message is conveyed, and the right lesson is learned. Quibbles about facts are for sticklers who are failing to get with the program and fall into line.
“Horror stories”
Horror stories, Scary Scenarios — they sell ideas. Appeals to emotion are effective on the emotional.
“and despite the fact that Malkin has never demonstrated a concern for truth in her entire career. I don't know how you can just take her word as definitive with that kind of track record.”
How you can call someone else on their writings is beyond me. MM is a bit of a hack and the hysteria she uses totally turns me off and makes me want to have nothing to do with he. But her facts are normally correct, it's her conclusions that are so out of wack. Kristof's response doesn't really address the “facts” in his reply, just sort of “I stand by my story” and hope it goes away sort of thing. You know your normal tactic. You used Brodniak as a poster boy for health care change, story was twisted by Kristof(not your fault), all the major points were, well, pointless, and you just stop in real quick to call MM names. Or is there somehow a lie that hospitals that take fed money must accept medicaid? That Brodziak's spokesman said that he was a patient vs. what Kristof reported. That seems a big claim to make up. A giant risk for MM for her to fake it. You're the writer, you check and trash MM if she's wrong, the partisan name calling just puts you rolling around in the mud. She did her homework, you didn't.
Shorter EEllis: I agree with Malkin's political opinions, so nothing else matters.
“She could have contacted Brodniak to confirm what she had been told by Delashaw and/or others at OHSU, but she did not.”
The hospital can't even say who is a patient there without permission. The only way they could release any info is with Brodziak's approval. the quote from MM is
“The spokesman told me that the Brodniak's were willing to confirm “reluctantly” for me that he has been a patient there for nearly a month, but they refuse to talk to me directly. The spokesman also told me that OHSU will not make its doctors available for further comment on the matter”
So you have the hospital going on record that Brodniak confirms that he is a patient and for MM not to contact him. So of course she should call him up asap right? So either the hospital lied totally about everything opening them up for a multimillion dollar suit. The hospital lied about Brodniak confirming opening them up for a multimillion dollar suit. Or of course it was the truth. Now what should I believe?
I mean it's ok to take Kristof at his word that there is not one doctor in the whole state that would treat a dying man because he only had medicaid even when it flies in the face of common reason, but not MM when she posts a comment from a doctor in that state saying that he would of treated Brodniak, would accept medicaid, and that federal funded hospitals couldn't turn away medicaid patents.
As long as you hold her (MM) to the same standards, by the way who did you confirm the info with before you blogged it? It seems you hold MM who is just a blogger like you to a higher standard than yourself, or the newspaper journalist. Is that a double standard or just hypocrisy?
honest Kathy: I'm wrong and know it so know I will insult people
honest Kathy: I'm wrong and know it so know I will insult people.
Permit me to edit your punctuation and usage slightly:
Honest, Kathy: I'm wrong and know it so now I will insult people.
My response: I know. And I could never compete because you're much better at that than I am.
Yeh my typo changes things Kathy. Don't forget to ignore all the issues and facts.
Ellis, you don't even get the meaning or the point of my edit (it had nothing to do with a typo), so how can you be expected to speak intelligently about issues and facts?
“Ellis, you don't even get the meaning or the point of my edit (it had nothing to do with a typo), so how can you be expected to speak intelligently about issues and facts?”
I'm honest Kathy and you are not. You are a hypocrite at best delusional at worst. You held another blogger to a far higher standard than anything you've ever done in your life, far higher than the new paper journalist, and refuse to acknowledge it when called on it. Instead you get snarky and condense my comment to “Shorter Ellis: I agree with Malkin's political opinions, so nothing else matters.” which is as far from what I said as can be. I said that I didn't like MM and called on you to do something besides bitch and insult. Then you turn and insult. You come off as a small bitter person Kathy. I'm sorry that your life is so bad but you get no pass from me. You are hypocritical well past the point of dishonesty and I will call it as I see it.
I do want to say that I don't believe there is anything wrong about developing an opinion based on “reports”. While jumping the gun may lead to egg on your face that's life. When you come out and run your mouth about it then you should have the character to own up when you are shown wrong. I like Kathy said:
“when clearly you have done the same thing by apparently accepting Michelle Malkin's post as “the real facts” even in the face of Nicholas Kristof's updates”
In this case I do believe MM over Kristof and if she were wrong I would have to drag my but out and admit it and eat crow. So be it. I think Kristof has been shown wrong and those who jumped the gun should cowboy up and admit it.
The fact is, Ellis, Malkin gets her facts wrong all the time and comes to the wrong conclusions all the time. She is partisan, dishonest, and vicious. Yet you accept her assertions as “facts” with, objectively, no reason to do so. You have no more reason to believe what she says she's been told as factual as you do anyone else. You are among the first to jump on anyone who draws even tentative conclusions from available facts, as long as the conclusions disfavor conservative or right-wing scripture — and you are also the first to jump to conclusions that favor right-wing beliefs and to accept shoddily sourced claims from disreputable sources as justification for those conclusions, when if someone on the left did the same thing, you would leap on them in an instant.
You demand that I apologize for drawing conclusions without having all the facts, and you also demand that I apologize for criticizing a known liar and propagandist when *she* draws conclusions you happen to sympathize with, even though she does not have all the facts, and even though she has claimed to have sought out the facts when she has in truth only raised more questions that she then refuses to find the answers to. And *then* you tell me that you are “honest,” while simultaneously turning to irrelevant and desperate ad hominem references to my personal life.
You are not, in fact, honest, and your rude demands for honesty and integrity and fair dealing from others when you refuse to live by the same standards discredits everything you say.
That's the end of what I have to say on this subject.
Kathy I dislike MM. The biggest difference between you two is that she is successful. In this case I do believe her, stopped watch and all that, because the original article is laced with obvious inacuracies and she apears to have taken some effort to discover the truth. What have you done? Thats right you called her a “liar and propagandist” without challanging any of the facts, not conclusions but facts, she presents.
“That's the end of what I have to say on this subject.”
And run away again when you are exposed as wrong.
“The biggest difference between you two is that she is successful.”
Successful at what?
“Successful at what?”
Being a partisan hack
Thank you, EEllis
So the bottom line is we have two journalists, one of which may not have done a good job fact checking, and the other who may have checked a little more and they came to different conclusions. As was pointed out, this was mostly a journalism gone wrong story. MM, seems to carry some negative baggage so we can't fully trust her. NK, got caught however and we hope, or his editors hope, he will do better in the future. most posters here seem to know journalists sometimes fudge, as we do in our comments. I am wondering if the internet and these kind of forums keep journalists more honest and thorough?
I think it does, and with almost lightning speed.
Didn't you do that very thing regarding Nicholas Kristof's op ed in your earlier thread? Its ok to be fooled, just recognize the errors and admit them when they become apparent. Want another example, what about that census worker Sparkman that hung himself.
Didn't you do that very thing regarding Nicholas Kristof's op ed in your earlier thread?
No, I don't believe that I did. Nothing Kristof wrote was untrue. Clearly, there is a disagreement, or a misunderstanding perhaps, about whether OHSU was willing to do the surgery Brodniak needs, or not, but that does not mean Kristof lied or got his facts wrong. OHSU claimed (after MM called them) that Brodniak was already under observation at the hospital, and all Brodniak had to do if he wanted surgery was ask. That was not Brodniak's understanding of what went down, as Kristof noted in his updates.
MM clearly has a partisan agenda, as is obvious from even a cursory glance at her (by now) several columns on this story. Most of what she writes in those posts is lengthy screeds about health care reform in general — endless, endless shrieking about how terrible “Obamacare” is, link after link after link to anti-Kristof comments on his column, and to emails and comments she's received, and on and on and on. Probably about one percent of her posts is actually about the facts of Kristof's column about John Brodniak.
If you want just one example of MM's dishonesty, look at the screencap she puts up of Kristof's follow-up column in response to MM's first post on this. The screencap includes Kristof's two updates— oops! except that there are THREE updates.
The first update is the Brodniak address for readers to send donations.
The second update is the news that several surgeons in Oregon have offered to do the surgery for free (in response to Kristof's original column).
Here is the third update, which MM not only does not include in the screencap, but does not mention in her post at all. Even her link to the column gives no hint that there is new information — it refers only to the first update, about donations. Here is the third update:
Obviously, given that MM has no interest in letting her readers know about this update, she certainly has no interest in following it up herself.
Another point: Someone in comments here at TMV (don't remember who) claimed that MM could not contact Brodniak and interview him because of hospital confidentiality rules. That is false, according to her own statement. She apparently tried to contact the Brodniaks for an interview, but they refused to speak with her. I'm sure that will look very damning to readers who are inclined to share MM's prejudices, but in truth I don't see how you can blame them. If I were in their situation, I would not want to be interviewed by MM either, regardless of knowing I was telling the truth. Who would? What sane person would want to be interviewed by MM if they were at the wrong end of her ideological telescope? If the Brodniaks felt that MM was not objective, wanted to portray them as liars, and did not mean them well, who could blame them?
“Someone in comments here at TMV (don't remember who) claimed that MM could not contact Brodniak and interview him because of hospital confidentiality rules. That is false, according to her own statement. “
That was me and it is not false just you misunderstanding again. It is against fed law to release any info on any patient, even the simple fact that they are a patient, without the patients or families approval. That is the law and it's been that way for years. MM indicated when she contacted a spokesperson for OHSU they (the hospital) were told by the Brodniaks that they could release the info that he had been a patient for almost a month. At the same time they said they did not want to be contacted by MM. I made a comment about how of course any normal person would of course get on the phone and start harassing the Brodniaks right after hearing that.
“Obviously, given that MM has no interest in letting her readers know about this update, she certainly has no interest in following it up herself.”
I went and checked she has the update posted and did before you……..oops!
It is against fed law to release any info on any patient, even the simple fact that they are a patient, without the patients or families approval.
I did not realize in my earlier comment that the Brodniaks had, through the hospital, refused to speak with her. And I understand that the hospital could not give her the Brodniaks' number w/o their consent.
So when I wrote, originally, that she made no effort to contact them, that was somewhat misleading, because she actually was told that they would not speak with her. She *didn't* make an effort to contact them, but the fact she already knew they didn't want to talk to her could, arguably, have made her decide not to try. But the fact is, she could have tried. Reporters are persistent creatures by nature, and the fact that the Brodniaks indicated they did not want to speak with her does not mean she could not have tried to persuade them to do so. The thing is, she would have had to convince them that she was not out to portray them as liars and fools, and she would have a hard time doing that, because in fact she was. She is not a reputable, credible journalist, and most people know that.
So, because she had not spoken with the Brodniaks, she could not confirm, or clarify, the hospital's account. Yes, the Brodniaks confirmed that John Brodniak had been a patient there, but it does not follow from that fact that he was actually being actively treated there, or what medical advice he had been given, or whether he had been advised to have surgery or told he couldn't have surgery. And in fact, John Brodniak himself told Kristof that he had had only one appointment at OHSU and that “he was told to give up, they could not help him.” AND, it was only after the Kristof column appeared that he started getting those calls from OHSU saying they wanted to see him.
Nevertheless, MM went ahead and published her posts attacking Kristof, saying that the story was false, the facts were wrong, the Brodniaks were deceiving everyone, etc., etc. She had absolutely no basis on which to make those claims. Yes, the few facts she had were correct, but the conclusions she drew from them were completely unwarranted. She did not make any real attempt to get the Brodniaks' side of the story, and she used the story as an excuse to start impugning all of Kristof's writing, the New York Times, Democrats in Congress, health care reform in general, etc., etc.
Kristof, by contrast, made an effort after some of Brodniaks' statements were contradicted by OHSU, to reconcile the two accounts. He gave us Brodniaks' explanation and he gave us OHSU's differing explanation. He did not attempt to draw further conclusions about who was right and who was wrong. He stuck to pointing out that Brodniak had gotten numerous offers of help after his column appeared, and that it now looked like he was going to get the treatment he needed.
Which is, after all, the point.
I went and checked she has the update posted and did before you……..oops!
You're right — I went back and it's there, way, way, way, way down in the post — after her ravings about Kristof and Afghanistan, after noting for no apparent reason that Pres. Obama signed “massive tobacco tax hikes” into being to finance the expansion of S-CHIP, after telling us about all the horrific things that “Obamacare” would do, after attacking other columns Kristof has done on health care reform, and after attacking the comments left by readers on those columns. AND, without any indication at the top of the post, or anywhere earlier in the post, that it's there.
But it IS there, so I stand corrected on that point.
However, it only raises another point. Because here is what MM says about Kristof's third update:
Without ever stating it explicitly, MM argues here that OHSU's assertion, “He has been a patient there for three weeks” means that John Brodniak's statement to Kristof that he had had “only one appointment” is either untrue or irrelevant; and that the hospital's statement to Kristof that Brodniak was “under observation” is either untrue or irrelevant. But the statement that Brodniak has been a patient at OHSU for three weeks does not imply either of those conclusions. MM is being incredibly disingenuous and dishonest here. So he was a patient at OHSU for three weeks. That does not mean he was under observation (and that phrase itself is very vague). It does not mean he had more than one appointment, and it does not mean the one appointment he did have was anything other than an intake interview.
Again, nothing you have rebutted me with to this moment has altered my conclusion that your demand for “having all the facts” is extremely selective.
“Again, nothing you have rebutted me with to this moment has altered my conclusion “
That's just you Kathy. If you said the sky was pink nothing I could do would make you admit it was blue.
And these last posts have not been about me demanding anything merely correcting statements of yours that were wrong.
LOL. Reading is Fundamental.
No worries Kathy, we all miss things sometimes in reading, some more than others. Done it myself far too often.