Hillary Clinton lied again! She loves to lie! She just can't stop! That hospital story? Totally not true! The hospital called her on it. How embarrassing! Right?

You'd think so, from the coverage, which I didn't catch up with until yesterday (sometimes, you just need a little political detox). I was generally aware of the story but in a cable-news-on-in-the-background sort of way — I knew that Clinton had told a story about the nation's awful health care system and the hospital had come out and denied it. It was being compared to Bosnia, to her exaggeration over the sniper fire — just another tall tale from Hillary Clinton. Could you trust anything she said?

Then I watched the actual clip. That's different from the clip that's gotten the most play, the clip of her telling the story, immediately followed by discussions of her credibility and fact-checking and how this was further damaging her credibility. Those are arguments we can get to later, but first, let's watch the original clip — the clip of Hillary Clinton hearing the story of Trina Bachtel for the first time, from Meigs County, Ohio Deputy Sherriff Bryan Holman, courtesy of CNN's Candy Crowley (transcript here). Sorry about the commercials:

(1) According to Deputy Sheriff Holman, Trina Bachtel went to three hospitals. One denied her treatment twice, one stopped her labor, and the third she was airlifted to. Which hospital is the one complaining?

(2) Here's how Hillary responded to the story: "Well, you know, I hear so many stories like that. People without insurance are more likely to die than people with insurance."

Let's stop for a moment and bring in print. This all started because Ann Kornblut of the Washington Post included the re-told anecdote in a story about Clinton on the stump. Kornblut's version of Clinton's version reflected Deputy Sherriff Holman's version, except with two hospitals — the first one that denied her visit based on the $100, and the Columbus hospital to which she was airlifted. Then the New York Times reported that a representative of O'Bleness Memorial Hospital in Athens, Ohio said that Bechtel had given birth there to a stillborn child and that she had had insurance. The hospital claimed that the story as Clinton (re)told it implied that O'Bleness had turned Bachtel away. According to the NYT's version of the retelling, the hospital was correct.

So now we have at least two versions of the original story being told by Clinton, differing essentially in number of hospitals, and in embellishment of details (i.e. "For fifteen days in the intensive care unit, doctors and nurses worked heroically, but she died" — Holman never said it quite like that).

Which Version Is Right?

It is still perfectly possible for the NYT's story to be correct — that the hospital claimed no malfeasance on its part, and that Bachtel had insurance — and for the WaPo story to be correct — that Bachtel had sought treatment at another hospital first, which had denied her. Kornblut has dug in with extra reporting and proved precisely this in her follow-up piece, citing Bachtel's aunt, Lisa Casto:

[Casto] said her niece had previously been in debt to a local hospital that later sent her a letter informing her that she could only be treated there in the future if she gave them a $100 deposit. At the time she went into debt to that hospital, Casto said, Bechtel was uninsured, though she later obtained health insurance and was insured at the time of her death.

This completely dovetails with the details the sheriff gave, right down to his claim that the hospital had turned her away because she'd owed money there previously. But — because this is all information that was available to the NYT when it published its story (complete with little shiv at the end for former staffer Kornblut: "Neither paper named the hospital or challenged Mrs. Clinton's account"). But the NYT — or those who picked the story up — wouldn't have even have had to challenge the hospital's account (always a possibility, too, right?), because there were so many other details from the sheriff's original story that still made sense. In fact, according to the sheriff, O'Bleness was the good hospital, the one to which she was airlifted — and Clinton's embellishments about doctors and nurses working heroically were in O'Bleness' favor.

The problem with the initial burst of coverage: No one had yet disputed the Sheriff's version. That was the original story, the source material from which Clinton drew. Jake Tapper noticed this, too: "On that, the jury is still out."

WaPo vs. NYT, Hillary vs. Hillary

This would be easier if we were only dealing with that one version. But the problem is that there are are two versions of the story: First, Holman's version as recounted by Clinton before Kornblut for the WaPo story, and second, the version retold by Clinton before Deborah Sontag for the NYT story. In that second version, Clinton mentions that Bachtel was turned away twice by one hospital and returned to that same hospital in an ambulance, where she died. Clearly different than the sheriff's version, and, according to O'Bleness, clearly wrong.

Alas, if Sontag's retelling is correct, then the fault is Clinton's for telling the story carelessly and inconsistently. It doesn't change the message of the story, of course, or the basic fact — woman turned away from hospital for want of $100 for what turned out to be an urgent need — but technically O'Bleness is correct. (Though also, given the above, so was the Clinton campaign — sort of stunning how quickly they backed off as soon as they were accused of trumping up the story. Once bitten twice shy, eh?)

This brings me to point two (shorter point, don't worry): Yes, Clinton and her staff should have vetted the story, but the reason she used it in the first place was because it was so familiar to her: "I hear so many stories like that." It was a pretty detailed story that corroborated her conclusion: "People without insurance are more likely to die than people with insurance." That's a conclusion she seemed to have already drawn, that this story corroborated. As for vetting, well,that raises a larger question: How much should a candidate trust in the credibility of voter stories? Should a candidate not retell anecdotes they've heard along the way? What if they source the story? Can that ever be enough? If not, pretty much every candidate is in hot water somewhere. I tend to believe the staffer who said that they did try to vet the story, but could not based on a dearth of information; Holman told the NYT that he didn't know it himself.

Upshot: This isn't a simple story — four hospitals, two reported versions in two separate newspapers, and questions every step of the way about what was said and whether it was vetted, or could be. But it's pretty clear right off the bat that this story was very different from Bosnia, and required the patient sorting of facts — by the media, by Clinton, and by her campaign once O'Bleness got in the game. Too bad that didn't happen — but, as it turns out, Bachtel's sad story did. And from here on in, that should be the focus.

Paper Trail:
In Speeches, Clinton Often Veers to Dark Side [WaPo]
Ohio Hospital Contests a Story Clinton Tells [NYT]
Clinton Told True Tale Of Woe, Says Kin [WaPo - The Trail]

Examination:
Is Hillary's Much-Maligned Hospital Story Fundamentally True? [ABC's Poltical Punch]
Transcript: Holman's Story [First Read]

Inevitable:
Dead Pregnant Girl Killed by Neither Insurance Nor Sniper Fire [Indecision 2008]