Excellent, thank you!
While most Obama residences can be traced, the hospital where he was born is difficult to document. The desire of historians to pinpoint where Obama's life began has crashed head-on with the modern American propensity toward confidentiality. The federal Health Information Privacy Act of 1999 — a law passed to protect medical records from public scrutiny — prevents hospitals from confirming births, administrators contend.
"We don't have plans to do anything," said Kapiolani Medical Center spokeswoman, Claire Tong, when asked how the center plans to commemorate the soon-to-be 44th U.S. president, who, according to Obama's family and other sources, was born at that hospital on Aug. 4, 1961.
"We can't confirm or deny it — even though all the information out there says he was born at Kapiolani Hospital. And that's because of the HIPA law."
However, this appears to contradict earlier media reports:
On weekday mornings as a teenager, Barry Obama left his grandparents' apartment on the 10th floor of the 12-story high-rise at 1617 S. Beretania, a mile and a half above Waikiki Beach, and walked up Punahou Street in the shadows of capacious banyan trees and date palms. Before crossing the overpass above the H1 freeway, where traffic zoomed east to body-surfing beaches or west to the airport and Pearl Harbor, he passed Kapiolani Medical Center, walking below the hospital room where he was born on Aug. 4, 1961.
Barack Obama
Age: 42
Born: Aug. 4, 1961, Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children, Honolulu.
Who exactly were Maraniss' and Serafins' sources?