Tennessee GOP State Rep.: Some People Pay For Health Care With Vegetables

The caption on this picture is even better than the one with Lowden and the chicken, but I think there may be a mismatch between the order of the pictures and the caption. At least I think so. I'm not entirely sure.

Is this the GOP solution to fixing medicare....Seniors will supplement the cost of medical care with farm commodities?

The very fact that Republican politicians are even suggesting in apparent seriousness that barter and bargaining are meaningful solutions to our health care problems is an indication of how far down the crazy road the GOP has driven. It's as though they've been swallowed whole by the John Birch Society.

This is actually very good for those Americans who are ovo-lacto vegetarians. To require that people who don't believe in raising animals for meat carry around a coop of chickens for payment is unfair in the extreme. Allowing them to carry around huge bins of carrots and zucchinis is a perfect solution.

Who needs a doctor?

Chicken... vegetables... Hmmm...

Add some water, herbs, spices and cook thoroughly and you got Chicken Soup!

Oh, don't forget that daily apple.

Mmmm-mmmm! My kinda healthcare!

I effing knew it! They're anarchists!

So can I donate to both of their campaigns with a promise to give them a music lesson in the next 3 years?

Fair trade I think.

What's next? A health care bartering exchange on Craig's list?

People should actually start doing this. Bring produce and live farm animals into healthcare clinics and emergency rooms, demanding services.

When challenged, refer the healthcare institution to the national and state RNCs; whose members and candidates are suggesting the practices.

Talk about a hoot!!

I'm waiting for MRI scans and hip-replacement surgery to show up on Ebay.

And I'm waiting on Ebay to start allowing bids to be made in chickens or pig's feet.

Cheers,

The beef industry lobby needs to get in on this right away, they're getting squeezed out.

I'm a healthcare professional. This whole thing brings 'working for peanuts' to a new level.

I suspect that in Tennessee some of the agricultural products will be delivered after a process of distillation less revenue stamps attached.

42 million people are currently using that 'no insurance' approach, leaving them with no choice but to use cash.

It's working just swell.

QUESTION FOR THE DAY: HOW MANY CHICKENS DOES IT TAKE TO PAY FOR CHEMO?

Randi Rhodes ( http://www.randirhodes.com/index.html ), last night, asked a caller, who agreed with bartering with doctors, if the doctors can take that chicken to the power company and pay his/her bill. The woman just stuttered and stammered... didn't have an answer. I'll bet the insurance companies won't take a chicken for those doctors' MALPRACTICE INSURANCE.

I wonder how they feel about turning tricks for care. Or bartering with dimebags. Whole hog or none, huh?

Let me explain why this is a bad idea in terms that republicans can understand:

-People who get Social Security, WIC, etc. can use those payments to buy chicken and vegetables.

-If they can get doctors to accept chicken and vegetables as payment, then they could conceivably pay for an abortion that way. GOVERNMENT FUNDED ABORTION, OH NOES!!!!11111ONE NO ROOSTERS FOR ROTO-ROOTERS!

I'm building a silo, gonna fill it up with corn instead of funding a health savings account.

Yet further proof that the GOP wants to roll back the clock to 1860. How long will it be before one of them suggests treating ourselves at home by bloodletting with leeches?

Some people pay for healthcare in vegetables.

While certain Republicans from Nevada and Tennessee ARE vegetables.

Enough said.

This is great!!;) dumb gopers are doubling down on their "health care plan" we need people in chicken and Assorted fruit and vegetable outfits at these peoples campaign events!!

Here's the thing, to get serious for a moment. Paying for medical care by bartering made sense once. Back when doctors were individual practitioners, made house calls, and charged about the value of a chicken for an office visit, and when individual doctors provided most of the health care there was, it was a practical proposition, especially in small towns and rural areas. My grandfather, a dentist in a small New Jersey town, sometimes was paid in chickens or vegetables, by people who had a lot of chickens and vegetables around.

In a world of MRIs, chemo, hospitals that charge $35.00 to bring you two aspirin tablets, hip replacements, etc., not to mention a nation of doctors whose fees for services rendered are the highest in the the world, it of course makes no sense. But much of the appeal of folks like the Tea Partiers and conservative Republicans, going back to Ronald Reagan, is the vision of a mythical golden age when *everybody* lived in small towns and looked like they belonged in Norman Rockwell paintings. That this golden age owes more to the myth-making abilities of the Russian-Jewish immigrants who created the major movie studios of the 1930s (see Gabler's "An Empire of Their Own" for a fascinating discussion of this story) than to anything resembling reality is neither here nor there. It's a compelling myth that has kept reactionaries in power for decades.

Peace,
Paul

Bartering is all well and good in a pre-industrial economy, where all members of the community are involved in either providing a personal service or product (butcher, baker, candlestick maker, cobbler, cooper, blacksmith, farmer, etc.). However, in modern America, the only people who actually have work product to trade are the self-employed, small business owners, and family farmers. While there are a fair number of such folks, it still leaves the majority of Americans with no access to medical care. I have actually been a member of barter networks at times in my life when I had personal services to offer (healthcare, actually). I can tell you that, while such networks have plenty of members offering alternative services like chiropractic, acupuncture, etc., they have virtually none offering radiology, surgery, etc. I suppose if there was no such thing as insurance at all, this might change, but as long as insurance is still the norm for 85% of the population, most folks will not be able to barter for such services regardless of how many chickens they have. And don't even get me started on whether the drug companies will take chickens for lipitor. Maybe if there were stronger environmental regs in red states, these poor saps wouldn't be growing up to be the mental defectives who come up with such ideas.