In a bizarre reversal today, I'm pretty much the only one in the media willing to NOT fall for the predictable snark that has emerged from Republican Senate candidate Sue Lowden's suggestion that people try bartering for health care. She, of course, wants to unseat Harry Reid this year.It's just much too easy to make fun in this case. Y'know what's harder? Actually looking at whether bartering for health care is even possible.
Turns out, it is. Maybe not by arriving at a doctor's office with a chicken under your arm, but there are certainly serious ways to do it. Read all about it in my just-up AOL News piece. If you can provide any service -- dog-walking, house-painting, copy editing, lawn-mowing -- then there is, in fact, a way for you to build up credits through a barter exchange and use them for certain sorts of health care services. It's not an actual, broad-based solution to the rising cost of health care, to be sure, but it's also not as ridiculous a notion as it seems on first blush. And yes, I thought it was nuts when I first heard it, too.
If my piece doesn't convince you, here are pieces from years past from MSNBC, CNN Money and Kaiser News Network. The Vegas and DC punditocracy finds these stories inconvenient because to them the actual substance of her remarks don't matter. Is it not the media's JOB to tell the public that (a) Lowden didn't say it was a total fix but (b) it is actually something that is practiced and could be viable for some people in some situations?
MSNBC's Countdown and Rachel Maddow shows, of course, have mocked Lowden. But guess what? Countdown host Keith Olbermann presented this report below in 2005 with a remark by the reporter, "An old-fashioned idea working for modern medicine" and Olbermann saying, "It sounds like it does fulfill needs on both sides of the equation."
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Mediaite slammed fill-in Countdown host Lawrence O'Donnell for somewhat mischaracterizing Lowden's proposal but still agreed she's loony tunes. Can't wait until there's video of Olbermann saying in 2005 that bartering sounds like an interesting innovation and in 2010 finding it hilarious.
And, to borrow from Maddow, one more thing. Look at the screen behind Rachel during this report last night:
Yes, the WHHSH cliche is irksome, obvious and cheap. But in Lowden's case, it's also inaccurate. Her two major public remarks about bartering occurred in Mesquite and Reno.
