Bartering is Back!

Get those roosters ready. Bartering is back!

Senate candidate Sue Lowden’s suggestion that assorted farm animals might be an important part of health care reform gave Nevada Republicans enough pause that they instead chose Sharron Angle as their nominee. But it seems that Lowden isn’t the only fan of trading cows for CAT scans.

Enter Kentucky Republican Rand Paul. Paul’s been in the news plenty for his abhorrent views on the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and his criticism of President Obama’s treatment of British Petroleum. But a 2002 interview suggests that Paul also supports trading chickens for checkups.

“We need to get insurance of out of the way and let the consumer interact with their doctor the way they did basically before World War II,” Paul said.

This is the exact same argument voiced by Lowden, who said that “before we all started having healthcare, in the olden days, our grandparents, they would bring a chicken to the doctor.”

It would be interesting to know if Paul – an eye doctor – would be willing to accept goats for glaucoma treatment. We do know that he’s happy to take government payments in the form of Medicare. In fact, payments to physicians seems to be the only government spending he doesn’t want to cut. Shocking.


http://www.dscc.org/news?type=the_rant&news_item_KEY=5232

for his eye doctoring? I'll bet the little jerk never took anything but green cash.

Put consumers directly in control vs letting private insurers who skim off top negotiate rates.

Both ideas are stupid and will fail to meet the needs of the people. They are both so stupid that the opposite idea looks brilliant to each base.

The only one who should be negotiating is a single government owned insurer operating in the interest of the people.