"A Painful Lie" (HospitalGate family speaks out, and they are NOT happy)

April 6, 2008 -- Hillary Rodham Clinton "misspoke" again on the campaign trail - and a distraught Ohio family is furious about it.

Several times in recent months while talking about her plan for universal health care, Clinton told a tale of woe about a young pregnant woman who sought medical care at a local hospital and was turned away for lack of insurance - and both she and the baby died.

But the family of the 35-year-old woman - Trina Bachtel - says the story is simply not true.

"Trina had good insurance. She was a good girl, and she worked hard. That story made her look like she was a welfare bum," her 80-year-old grandmother May Mayle told The Post yesterday.

Mayle confirmed that Bachtel died last August from complications related to a late-pregnancy miscarriage, but said she was never turned away from a hospital.

"The family is real torn up about it. I can't understand why they'd make her out to look like she was so unstable," said Mayle.

As Clinton told the story during campaign rallies, the young, pregnant woman in difficulty was turned down for treatment because she was uninsured and couldn't pay $100 up front.

She didn't name Bachtel or the hospital involved, but after the Washington Post ran a story identifying her and where she worked - a Pizza Hut in Pomeroy, Ohio - local papers made it front-page news, horrifying her still-grieving family.

"Of course she would have had $100," fumed Mayle. "Her boyfriend's real angry about it, too, because he had good insurance. They were going to get married, but worked so hard they couldn't find the time."

Clinton apparently learned of the story from one of her local supporters, Deputy Sheriff Bryan Holman. He told papers he heard it secondhand from Bachtel family members. At an event with Sen. Clinton, he related it to her.

"She tells the story as it was told to her by the deputy sheriff," a Clinton spokesperson said. "She had no reason to doubt his word."

Mayle said Bachtel went to the O'Bleness Memorial Hospital on Aug. 4 for a routine check-up and was told her baby was stillborn.

"They told her to come back the next day, and she did, and they made her deliver the baby even though he was dead. Then she just didn't get better."

The family transferred her to a different facility in Columbus, where she died Aug. 17.

The Clinton camp told papers it had tried to check out as much of Holman's story as was possible, but hadn't been able verify all the details.

Get back to me when you can show that the sheriff's story included her pay scale and insurance situation.

Get back to me when you can show that the sheriff's story included her pay scale and insurance situation.

But it is the story of the pregnant pizza worker to which Clinton comes back repeatedly. At a Democratic dinner on March 2, she recounted it in full. She told it at a late-night rally in Cleveland just two days before the Ohio primary March 4, bringing the noisy audience to near-silence. She told it again in Charleston, W.Va, last month. Even her daughter, Chelsea, who was with her mother in Ohio when she heard the story, repeated it at a campaign stop in Pennsylvania last week. Clinton was told the story by Bryan Holman, the Meigs County deputy sheriff, who said the deceased woman was Trina Bachtel, whom campaign officials had been unable to identify.

Bachtel, Holman said, had been turned away from the hospital not only for lack of $100 but also because she had unpaid bills -- a detail that Clinton has not mentioned. Public records show that Bachtel of Pomeroy, Ohio, died on Aug. 15, 2007, at age 35. She previously had thousands of dollars in hospital debt, but it was paid off by 2005.

"It was a really terrible story," said Holman, who said he voted for Clinton in the Ohio primary. He said he is grateful that she has taken Bachtel's story to heart. "That is what we wanted."

Get back to me when you can show that the sheriff's story included her pay scale and insurance situation.