Hillary Clinton's Last Sick Poster Child

In a follow up to yesterday's post about the dishonest presentation of SCHIP from the Frost family, take a look at the last sick poster child used by Hillary Clinton. Excerpts from Michelle Malkin's article at Jewish World Review:

This is the tragic tale of Jennifer Bush.

Do you remember Jennifer? Probably not. First Lady Hillary Clinton, who helped turn Jennifer into a national political prop for health care reform in 1994, must be very grateful that we've all forgotten the poor little girl from Coral Springs.

Six years ago, Jennifer's mother wrote a widely-publicized letter to the White House. "Do you know what it is like to choose between purchasing groceries for the week to feed your family or buying needed medications for your chronically ill child?" Kathleen Bush asked.

Pale and wan, young Jennifer suffered from unidentified chronic digestive problems and myriad ailments from birth. She had her gall bladder, appendix, and fragments of her intestines removed. Those organs were replaced with a tangled cable of feeding tubes that constricted Jennifer's 43-pound frame. Surgeons threaded a catheter into the girl's heart. After 200 hospital visits and 40 operations, the Bush family had racked up medical bills worth more than $2 million.

Puzzled doctors and nurses scratched their heads over Jennifer's 33,000-page medical file.

Politicians unquestioningly embraced the Bushes and their tale of need. Hillary cuddled with seven-year-old Jennifer for the cameras.

Shamelessly coached...Jennifer dutifully told the press: "I pray every night that I can get better - and that everyone can have insurance."

Jennifer's mother reveled in the relentless media attention and generous outpourings of public sympathy. Dropped by the family's health insurer, out of a job, and in allegedly dire financial straits, Mrs. Bush poignantly appealed for government relief from the burden of Jennifer's mysterious illness. "It's strangling us," she told one reporter.

But who was strangling whom? Several years before Hillary deified Mrs. Bush and elevated Jennifer to poster-child stardom, suspicious medical professionals had already begun questioning the mother's role in making her "beautiful little angel" sick. Nurses complained that Mrs. Bush was force-feeding her child with unnecessary seizure drugs that made her vomit.

Independent specialists conducted extensive tests on Jennifer and found no evidence of digestive disorders. When Jennifer was separated from her mother for treatment at a Cincinnati hospital, the starved child feasted mightily on pizza, hot dogs, and chocolate bars. Meanwhile, authorities discovered that while the Bush family claimed poverty because of Jennifer's health problems, they had splurged on trips to the Bahamas and Disney World, house remodeling, and a new Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

Jennifer was removed from her family in 1996 and has been healthy ever since.

Last week, Kathleen Bush -– Hillary Clinton's once-proud and loud sister in arms -- was sentenced to five years in prison on two counts of aggravated child abuse and one count of fraud. She also pled guilty to a separate count of welfare fraud for misrepresenting $60,000 in assets on Medicaid forms.

"There was probably more abuse in this single case," lead prosecutor Bob Nichols noted, "than in all of the child-abuse cases I've prosecuted in my life combined."

Again, if SCHIP (or universal health care of some kind) is the savior of America's health care, why do proponents have to lie about it to get people on board?

Don't buy this trash. Tell your reps not to buy it, either.

There's my two cents.