Nevada Senate candidate Sue Lowden (R) has certainly raised the bar in the health care reform debate. She said this: “You know, before we all started having health care, in the olden days, our grandparents, they would bring a chicken to the doctor. They would say I’ll paint your house. … I’m not backing down from that system.”
She has continued to endorse and defend the “barter for your bypass” system. Which is clearly the right direction for reform–I mean, heck, my own doctor told me, and I believe him, he really, really loves chicken. Most doctors do, you know.
This does raise an interesting question or two–what if you don’t have anything your doctor wants? And if the best you’ve got isn’t good enough, like say you offer the doc an old refrigerator and it breaks before your surgery, are you going to end up with a piece of PVC pipe instead of a new liver or whatever?
In a rare bout of cheek, the Democrats have responded with something both barbed and funny, a page at which you can request Lowden’s help in finding a doctor who’ll treat, say, scurvy, for a couple of goats.
That ought to be one interesting campaign.
Personally, I think we ought to employ this barter system differently. If you’re the CEO of a company who’s benefiting from a bailout, your salary just went up to 12 chickens per month, with bonuses paid in bailing wire and seed corn.
With all those chickens up for grabs, I’m betting the healers who practice Santeria will be the ones most set for a real boost in business.
