CLEVELAND — A woman championed as the Obama administration’s emblem for health care reform does not have to choose between her home and her health, according to officials at the Ohio hospital where she is being treated.
With a self-reported annual income of about $6,000, Natoma Canfield, 50, is a prime candidate for financial aid in the form of Medicaid — the federal health care program for low-income and disabled people — or charitable assistance.
And the Cleveland Clinic said it has no intention of putting out a lien on Canfield’s house — or letting the billing process interfere with her treatment.
The self-employed house cleaner had written to Obama before the holidays to request that he count her as a “statistic,” as she put it, among scores of Americans unable to afford health insurance, but she never expected a response.
Obama traveled to northeast Ohio on Monday to champion Canfield’s plight as evidence of why health care reform is needed. The idea that Canfield would have to give up her home originated first in the letter she wrote to the president, in which she explained that she feared she would have to sell it in order to pay her medical bills. The Associated Press
