Lawmakers’ anecdotes about themselves, others, conjure a cast of characters at health summit

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Invisible supporting cast at health summit

WASHINGTON — They weren’t seen or heard at Thursday’s presidential health summit, but a supporting cast of characters haunted the scene, from a woman forced to wear her dead sister’s dentures to President Barack Obama’s daughters.

These individuals and others emerged briefly throughout the daylong summit hosted by Obama as both Democratic and Republican lawmakers invoked their own personal stories, along with anecdotes from friends and constituents, to try to prove their points. There was a similarity to the touching or troubling stories of people in need even when the tellers were at loggerheads.

Among the vignettes heard Thursday:

—The one from Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y. drew some stunned looks. She talked of a constituent who had no insurance, had no dentures, and had to wear her death sister’s ill-fitting teeth. “You will not believe this, and I know you won’t, but it’s true,” Slaughter said.

“She wore her dead sister’s teeth, which of course were uncomfortable and did not fit. Do you ever believe that in America that that’s where we would be?”

— Everyone got to know Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., a little better when he warned of insurance companies that drop people because of their health history and talked of his own medical situation. “I sit here with two artificial hips, a little bit of arthritis, and I have a kidney stone,” he said.

—Obama himself retold the story of his mother’s death from cancer, saying that she spent the last six months of her life battling insurance companies. He talked about his daughters, too, telling of rushing Malia to the emergency room with asthma, and Sasha requiring a spinal tap and antibiotics as a baby because she had meningitis.

“In each of those instances, I remember thinking while sitting in the emergency room, what would have happened if I didn’t have reliable health care?” the president asked.

—Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the Republicans’ leadoff speaker, introduced viewers and fellow lawmakers to “a friend of mine from Tullahoma, Tennessee” whose wife had breast cancer. The couple’s health costs would have been unaffordable without help from their employer and Alexander’s friend told the senator something needed to be done about the health system — but the Democrats’ bill wasn’t the answer.

“‘I hope you’ll kill that health care bill,’” Alexander quoted his friend as saying.

—”I’ve seen grown men cry,” revealed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., describing a Michigan man with a bedridden wife and dwindling finances. In Pelosi’s telling, the circumstances argued for health care overhaul.