Monkeysdad wrote: 
Because it was SO STUPID!

 OCDHG wrote: 
Of course I do. But as I've stated or inferred here a couple times today I don't take too much stock in what she's saying; old world practices in a modern world...it simply won't work. A poorly articulated point made in a very public forum with a very manipulative and biased media outlet. I'm still baffled that what she said has gotten this much traction around here.

 Monkeysdad wrote: 
I agree with you. For as stupid a comment as it was, it was hardly worth beating it for all its worth, and then some. It's a slow news time. But most of those msnbc are way too over the op for me. I like to hear the news, and even the commentary, but I don't care for the school yard teasing.

May I suggest to these people like the chicken lady, that they think before they speak.

Very rarely I barter; if it's something I truly need and will save me money at a time when I don't have an immediate need of cash for some
other expenditure, which is chronically seldom. Also I might barter if it is an item that is worth far more than the service rendered and I know I can liquidate it quickly...

One of my clients is an orthopedic surgeon. I'm sure I could have bartered graphics design services but for what? There's not much he could offer me except an exam and maybe write a script if I needed medication. He certainly wouldn't be in a position to offer me arthroscopic surgery, PT, lab work or anything else that would require a third party to be involved. Bartering would pretty much limit a physician to offering free advice in exchange for goods or service and personally that wouldn't help me much. Occasionally I see chiropractors and alternative medicine professionals offer to barter for design services. It might work with dentistry. But not so much with mainstream western medicine here in the US. 

 OCDHG wrote: 
She doesn't impress me at all(nor does Harry Reid for that matter) and as was discussed here earlier it seems she was suggesting bargaining vs. bartering as a way to bring individual healthcare costs down which I think is impractical at best and a pipe-dream as far as bringing down the costs for a nation of 300 million.
Another thing suggested here today is that her critics are playing this for all it's worth, and it isn't worth that much at all; I watched it last night on MSNBC(for all you folks out there that think I'm a sole-source media watcher) and the way the clip was played and manipulated was entirely out of context, unfair and completely biased. SNL could've parodied this and been more believable. Pretty disgusting if you ask me, for all the poop dropped here on RP about Fox I keep hoping to see something of a higher calibre commentary...certainly didn't come from Rachel last night!

 OCDHG wrote: 
Also, she said that she is standing by what she said, which sounds to me like she meant it.

 Monkeysdad wrote: 
Fair enough... but do you find it disturbing that she thinks it's reasonable to try to barter at all?  Forget chickens and paint jobs... what do you think about the sentiment, regardless of the poor delivery? 

 Monkeysdad wrote: 
If she didn't mean this, then what did she mean? I can't see how it could be taken any other way.

Krugman.

Everyone’s having fun with the chickens for checkups story, in which Sue Lowden, the leading Republican Senate candidate in Nevada, expressed a desire to return to the good old days in which people who wanted a checkup from their doctor would offer a chicken in exchange. And she’s not backing down!

But I think even the mocking critics are missing the main point. Sure, it’s funny to see a 21st-century political candidate pining for the days of a barter economy. But her remarks would have been breathtakingly ignorant even if she had called for payments in cash.

The key fact about health care — the central issue in health care economics — is that it’s all about the big-ticket items. Checkups don’t cost much; neither does the treatment of minor illnesses. The money that matters goes to bypasses and dialysis — costs that are highly unpredictable, and that almost nobody can afford to pay out of pocket. Modern health care, if it’s going to be provided at all, has to be paid for mainly out of insurance.

Conservatives don’t like this; if few of them propose paying in chickens, there is nonetheless a constant refrain of calls for making the market for health care more like the market for bread, with consumers paying out of medical accounts and engaging in comparison shopping. There is, for example, vast romanticizing of things like Lasik and cosmetic surgery, which are held up as models for health care as a whole — even though they’re actually very poor models. (They’re discretionary and fairly cheap — not at all like the procedures that dominate health costs in the real world.)

Why this preference for cash? Because even conservatives know in their hearts that insurance markets are deeply imperfect, which means that standard free-market arguments become very weak once insurers are involved. And so they pretend that we don’t really need all that insurance.

The business with the chickens adds an additional level of absurdity. But Ms. Lowden’s perspective is ludicrous even without the feathers.

 

 OCDHG wrote: 
Personally, I heard a woman who obviously has a hard time articulating what she wants to convey use practices from yesteryear to make a point; at no time did I think she was really proposing that we all go out and trade chickens and paint jobs for medical attention.
For me it was kind of like Michelle Obama saying: "For the First Time in My Adult Lifetime, I'm Really Proud of My Country"....does anyone really think that the first time Michelle Obama was proud of the USA was 2 years ago?!

 Monkeysdad wrote: 
I didn't take her "literally," but even the sentiment seemed a little (OK, a lot) unrealistic to me.  What do you think about it?

 justin_thyme wrote: 

I'm surprised anyone, either here on RP or out there in meatspace, is taking what she said so literally.

 Yibbyl wrote: 
I heard a lady who:
1) thinks it is realistic to walk up to the front desk and ask to talk to a doctor though they don't have insurance or cash to pay for whatever it is they need (odds are against it)
2) thinks that even IF such a person gets an audience with a doctor, that offering to "paint a house" (her words) would be accepted as trade for health services (doubtful)
3) thinks that even IF such an offer would be acceptable, assumes that the sick person would actually even have anything of worth to barter (highly unlikely in many cases)
4) seems a little out of touch with reality

Why?  What did you hear?

I just imagine my 87 year-old grandmother with Alzheimer's offering to wax his Volvo, or my late, 68 year old father with renal failure and heart failure offering to collect golf balls...  Amusing in a sick kind of way...

 OCDHG wrote: 
and then tell them you'll trade them a cake with a sick person in it for TB treatments...

Wow.  People hear what they want to hear, I guess.    Me, I'd rather hear RP.

 justin_thyme wrote: 
They don't seem to need much help, but the added nonsense makes for good theater and rising advertising revenues for the
true powers that be.

 OCDHG wrote: 
And how do you use a chicken or a basket of vegetables to pay for a lifesaving antibiotic prescription?  Or for the CT scan to diagnose the epidural hematoma that will kill you unless it's diagnosed and drained? 

She's a dangerous whacko, typical of the right wing nutjobs who are doing their best to bring down the Obama administration.

 Manbird wrote: 
Nice!

 Manbird wrote: 

That's exactly what I was going to say...