Fowl Math For A Chicken-Based Health Care Economy

enough with the clucking chickens! vegetables way more practical. Sheesh!

Sure hope I'm not going to the doctor for a bad back; as I have to carry all those chickens to get looked at.

And if my back is fine, it won't be by the time I get to the Docs Office!!!

What would really help here is if there were some kind of single, universally accepted commodity, which could be used as a medium of exchange for all the others...

Ooh, the snark, it burns!!! The goggles, they do nothing!

Not enough chickens? A Federal Chicken Reserve is the answer. The chicken banks can deposit hard chickens, then loan out ten times more chickens then they really have. In case of a run on the chicken banks, all we will need to do is expand the FDIC to cover up to 19,920.32 chickens per account, if my math is correct. I'm sorry if I'm not making much sense here.

Geithner. Geithner would love to do it!

That is great. well then you know what, those chickens hate America, that's all there is too it!

Shorter Lowden: Return the US to the Chicken Standard!

So what you're saying is that we'll be buying our insurance from Tyson.

The barter plan seems workable to me. After all most doctors fees are just chicken feed anyway.

I've looked over the numbers, and as mathematician, my professional opinion is that the large numbers of chickens involved make bartering for health care with chickens infeasible.

You liberals obviously don't understand basic economics. There's no shortage if you take into account the velocity of money, or in this case the speed the chickens can fly at.

Thought I'd point out something pretty obvious but that, up to this point, has been glossed over. Looked at in the correct light, chicken pot pies meet *some* of the criteria we need for this new chicken-based economy. They are portable (after a fashion) and aren't as large as an actual chicken. So perhaps all of the 'invisible medical fairies' (you know them as nurses, medical assistants, lab techs, phlebotomists, x-ray techs, etc...) could be paid in chicken pot pies and the doctors could be paid in chickens. The dental tech who cleans your teeth? Chicken pot pies. The dentist who does your root canal? Chickens.

As far as where to raise 459 billion chickens, I have a modest proposal. We could raise them on the moon! There's a lot of space. Chickens don't take up THAT much space and the moon is 1/4th the size of the Earth, nothing to sneeze at and doesn't have all that inconvenient ocean. Build some domes (KBR will do it, I'm sure) lift the chickens up the gravity well. Voila! This could work. A whole NEW kind of free-market capitalism awaits us in a bright new feathery future!

She doesn't look to be too much younger or older than me (51) and I know for a fact my grandparents used money to pay for their health care.

How is it that the crack research team was able to source the worldwide chicken population but not the human population of the US? Just kidding; good job guys.

All you Doubting Thomas Paine wannadoobees give me gas.

Yeah, math is tough -- especially for those who've forgot how to balance their checking accounts (leave aside quadrilateral equations and calculus and algebra and such).

But this is about pure SCIENCE, people. And if it takes M-theory and string theory and constantly emerging blackholes and supralightspeed expansion to explain the very context of our existence, then we oughtta buck up, suck it in, and embrace the superficially-elusive-yet-fundamentally-elegant (not to mention characteristically Republican) Lowden Fowl Solution to the problem of how to pay for universal health coverage.

This here smart professor guy explains it all, using a minimum of terms; and you can also cruise the toobz for a pdf of his entire thesis, and even his Powerpoint (for the reading impaired):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_-1d9OSdk

To quote the POTUS: you're welcome.

How many chickens must a doctor collect to pay insurance premiums or rent? How much is postage to mail chickens to your insurance broker? How about student loans? Can these also be paid in poultry?

Hey guys...Stop it! I've never laughed so hard in my life. My gut hurts.
Thank god for the lefties' sense of humour against all the stupidity and hatred coming from the right.

I'm not saying that the barter thing would work (except maybe for Reid's electoral prospects--I hope so),but there's a problem with your math. To explain it in a simple way, not all the annual health care bill needs to be paid with just the current stock of chickens. The health care bill is an annual one, so you need to compare to the number of chickens produced (or potentially produced) annually (which may be a couple generations' worth--more, if we converted our egg production to paying for healthcare).

The other question: what would the doctors do with all the chickens? Perhaps make chicken soup for their patients?--could actually help our health....

I've solved all my medical/chicken-bartering needs: I have successfully taken the San Diego Chicken hostage! And next I'm going after Henrietta "Ginger" McClucksky, the famous Chick-Tac-Toe playing chicken. Bawk on that, Cluckers!

Let's get real about what the Republicans are saying when they make comments such as "I know Mennonites who pay their doctors with vegetables."

If you want to get your teeth cleaned, you will need to bring your Dentist several bushels of asparagus. Assuming that the Dentist's staff and creditors are willing to take some of their pay in asparagus, this could work. The problem comes when it is something more than a teeth cleaning or getting a script for antibiotics. If you need chemotherapy or heart surgery, you would need several semi-trailers full of chickens and fruit -- and if you have a bad ticker, how are you giong to pick all that fruit.

So let's get real. When the Republicans say that, what they actually mean is that if you need anything more than a $100 procedure, then you should just die. And the sad truth is that this is probably the outcome in some of those cult communities that live on the barter system.

That's OK if that is how the Mennonites want to live (although I really don't think they should put their children through this.) And if the teabaggers want to try out this program, that is 100% OK with me. Good luck with that one, teabaggers. But the rest of us would like to live in a more advanced society.

we vegans are screwed. oh, wait, we don't get sick that much. never mind.

What would really help here is if there were some kind of single, universally accepted commodity, which could be used as a medium of exchange for all the others...

Turnips..

C

I wonder what that new job's celery is?

I think Obama is going to have to separate the yolk and white to have a truly bipartisan solution.

Teabaggers think the drive up window at KFC is an ATM.

Doctor, the chick is in the mail.

Yes, I can see the humor in chicken barter heath care, but there is an ugly, hateful aspect to this also.

Lowden is using the barter idea as way way to appear "folksy." It is a deliberate strategy to appeal to the low information voter. Those who are confused about the complexities of the he said/ she said health care debate are comforted by this simplicity.

This is the dumbing down of politics. there is a reason why the Republicans do this. It appeals to a certain segment of the population who can be persuaded to vote against their own intrests. This how Republicans win elections.

Ridicule is a powerful political tool. In this case I think Lowden has blundered, but there will be a certain percentage of voters who like the simplicity and cuteness.

Don't count your chickens before they are hatched.

So it begins...now the corrupt fucking media actually reports on the real costs of Obama's poece of shit healthcare scam\

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-04-22-health-care-costs_N.htm?csp=24&RM_Exclude=Juno

..see the part about seniors not getting resources for treatment??

There's your death panel motherfuckers

You failed to mention this: "The overhaul will increase national health care spending by $311 billion from 2010-2019, or nine-tenths of 1%."

You failed to mention this: An additional 34 million people will have health care coverage.

Now, Barney... I'm very disappointed with you. If I didn't know you better, I might think were a little turd.

And I guess doctors are suppose to pay their bills and their employees in chickens and vegetables. Is she suggesting we just do away with currency all together or are they also going to have to be in the chicken selling/farmers market business as well? I think the next move TPM should make is interviewing doctors and the AMA to see what they think of the whole idea. It could be very interesting and entertaining. Since we're gonna try to revert back to olden days health care, can we start forcing home visits again. I hate how much time I waste in the waiting room. Doctors should have to come to my house with their little black bag and pick up their own chicken. I really hope that they develop time travel soon, and we can send all these dingbats back to the 1950's where they belong.

This whole thread is just too fowl for me to comment on.

I live in the city, not on a farm. If my physician wants chickens or vegetables, where am I going to get them? Buy them?

Tyson is up 2-1/3 chickens on strong volume this morning.

Even if we give this bimbette the benefit of the doubt and assume she meant "bargaining", not "bartering," it's still ridiculous. How much time did you doctor give you the las time you saw him. Will he schedule you for a 15-minute price negotiating session as well? Will doctors have to hire negotiatating agents? How much will that add to the cost of health care? And in any case, it's zero sum - any gains to the patient will be losses to the doctors. That will go over well with the AMA.

I'm seeing my dentist tomorrow who is a republican. I thinking of bringing some bagels and ask him if he'll accept them as payment for his services. If he refuses, I will tell him that some of the folks in his party think it's a good idea. I'll let you know what happens..lol...

The thing about paying doctors in chickens: it presupposes a lot of other people who don't pay in chickens, so that the doctor can cover wages, rent, supplies, electricity and so forth. In short, all the people who do it the regular way are subsidizing those ones who can't or won't.

Which is pretty much the GOP standard: get a special deal for yourself, at the expense of all those other people.

When I called my provider to ask how many chickens he would take for my colonoscopy, he suggested that I use the chicken to perform the procedure.

A friend just raised a pertainent question:

"Did Ms. Lowden asked her plastic surgeon to take it out in trade."

Good question. If she did, I think they both got short changed.