In a new ad out today, Priorities USA, a super PAC backing Barack Obama, suggests that Mitt Romney is responsible for a woman’s death by cancer. “When Mitt Romney and Bain closed the plant, I lost my health care, and my family lost their health care,” says Joe Soptic, referring to the closing of GST Steel in Kansas City, Mo., in 2001. “And, a short time after that, my wife became ill. I don’t know how long she was sick and I think maybe she didn’t say anything because she knew that we couldn’t afford the insurance. And then one day she became ill and I took her up to the Jackson County Hospital and admitted her for pneumonia and that’s when they found the cancer and by then it was stage four.”
“It was, there was nothing they could do for her,” he adds. “And she passed away in 22 days. I do not think Mitt Romney realizes what he’s done to anyone, and furthermore I do not think Mitt Romney is concerned.”
But Politico caught that Soptic’s wife did not pass away until 2006:
In the case of this particularly jarring super PAC ad, it may also be relevant that Soptic’s wife died in 2006, years after the GST factory closed down.
A 2006 story in the Kansas City Star reported the death of Ranae Soptic, a former champion roller skater: “Soptic went to the hospital for pneumonia, but doctors found signs of very advanced cancer, and she died two weeks later on June 22.”
The Priorities USA ad:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Nj70XqOxptU