Obama Health Care Horror Anecdote: Sloppy Mistake or Lie?

"And now... you know... the REST of the story!" Here's Jonathan Weisman's clarification in WSJ.

President Barack Obama, seeking to make a case for health-insurance regulation, told a poignant story to a joint session of Congress last week. An Illinois man getting chemotherapy was dropped from his insurance plan when his insurer discovered an unreported gallstone the patient hadn't known about.

"They delayed his treatment, and he died because of it," the president said in the nationally televised address.

In fact, the man, Otto S. Raddatz, didn't die because the insurance company rescinded his coverage once he became ill, an act known as recission. The efforts of his sister and the office of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan got Mr. Raddatz's policy reinstated within three weeks of his April 2005 rescission and secured a life-extending stem-cell transplant for him. Mr. Raddatz died this year, nearly four years after the insurance showdown.

Obama aides say the president got the essence of the story correct. Mr. Raddatz was dropped from his insurance plan weeks before a scheduled stem-cell transplant.

Yes—Obama's story scores high in the truthiness category, but it is by no means the whole truth, and is a gross mischaracterization of the actual story. So here's my question. Of all the horror stories like his fabricatation of which we are told millions supposedly exist, why does Obama have to pick this one and doctor it up? I mean, this is actually a good example of how the system works fairly well, even amid setbacks. Is this an example of plain sloppiness on the President's part, or a deliberate lie which he knew would outdistance the still unbooted Truth, or a little of both?