After nearly a month of national ridicule, Lowden’s campaign manager’s (Robert Uithoven) outrageous comments while discussing health care reform and BarterGate on Face to Face culminate with he and Lowden being named Worst Persons in the World.

Photo credit: Mona Shield Payne / Special to the Sun. Horencia Sanchez, 36, discusses her dental options Tuesday with office clerk Carmen Garcia at the Nevada Health Centers location at 2212 S. Eastern Avenue. The increase of uninsured patients has hurt the nonprofit Nevada Health Centers, which has 33 locations across the state.

According to Marshall Allen of the Las Vegas Sun the fact that the medical safety net is at the breaking point is the recession.

The number of patient visits is up 25 percent to about 205,000 a year, and an increasing number of them — almost three in 10 — are uninsured, Nevada Health Centers CEO Tom Chase said. And when the uninsured agree to greatly reduced payment plans, they frequently stiff the agency.

More than 600,000 Nevadans are expected to be without health insurance in 2010. Nevada Health Centers is a $28 million organization that qualifies for federal grants and funding because its 33 locations are in far-flung towns such as Beatty and Elko and blighted urban parts of Las Vegas and North Las Vegas. Patients who qualify get discounts on services. A typical physical examination and medical history, with lab tests, costs about $45 for a low-income patient — about half what it costs the organization, Chase said.

The organization’s struggles are bad news for people such as Patricia Annis of Henderson. Annis, 67, is a retired legislative aid whose teeth are breaking. She’s desperate for care and heard about a Nevada Health Centers’ program providing free dental work to low-income elderly patients. Her $733 a month in Social Security income qualifies her.

“I’ve had two teeth die on me,” Annis said. “I’ve had to find a way to get temporary treatment from a private dentist, but I need a root canal.”

The problem is Nevada Health Centers is flooded with low-income elderly with dental needs, Chase said. The $150,000 dental-care grant was divided evenly between Nevada Health Centers in Elko and Las Vegas, and the money is going fast, Chase said.

Hard to believe but Sue Lowden, Republican candidate out to unseat Democratic Senator Harry Reid, continues to advocate bartering with doctors for health care.

She appeared on Nevada Newsmakers on April 19 saying:

I’m telling you that this works. You know, before we all started having health care, in the olden days our grandparents, they would bring a chicken to the doctor, they would say I’ll paint your house. I mean, that’s the old days of what people would do to get health care with your doctors. Doctors are very sympathetic people. I’m not backing down from that system.

Watch:

It is getting national attention. On Daily Kos Jed Lewison writes:

That’s right. ‘Bring a chicken to the doctor.” Seriously. We’re not making this up.

Clearly, Lowden’s absurd statement is going to bite her over and over again during the course the campaign — it’s a huge gift to Harry Reid. Really, the only question Lowden’s statement raises is this: how would you mock her health care plan?

Some ideas that I’ve heard tossed around by others who are far wittier than me:

• You know, I bet most modern doctors would prefer a KFC meal to a live chicken.  Market efficiencies are not such that killing your own chicken really makes sense anymore.
• It seems not to have occurred to her that people brought chickens and offered to paint houses in the olden days because EVEN IN THE OLDEN DAYS, PEOPLE COULDN’T AFFORD THEIR DAMN HEALTH CARE.
• It’ll never work … some asshole will try to game the situation — bring a snake and say, “but it tastes like chicken.”
• “I’m telling you that this works. As an employer, having your employees barter a chicken beats paying for health care. I’m serious about this. Doctors like chickens.”
• Question: Do turkeys count?
• Oh, well, in the olden days, yeah. That’s a great health care plan, then! You give me a chicken, and I’ll put leeches on your face. Deal?
• I’ve been picturing granny after her broken hip operation. Should she decide to give up food or climb a ladder and paint?
• Now mentally picturing an image of an old, sick person in a hospital bed with a doctor standing in the doorway holding a chicken by the feet. Doctor says: Give me that chicken, or I’ll expect you at the house by 7:00 a.m. I’ll be nice and provide the paint and brushes.
• Plus no chicken means no eggs. And no eggs means no capital gains taxes. Tax deduction!

Please join the fun — add your ideas in the comments!

As of this writing 374 comments have been left by readers of Daily Kos. Here are some samples of what they’re saying:

“Doctors could pay off their student debt with chickens,” writes Sam Wise Gingy.

“Can’t ya just picture a waiting room full of people holding chickens, pigs, carrots, baked goods, tool boxes, portable stripping poles…….

“It would make a good Monty Python skit!” writes enough already.

Jay Leno has also chimed in.

Ed Schultz says:

Schultz calls it psycho-talk.

You can’t be serious. But, apparently she is.

FactCheck.org writes:

We’ve seldom seen a piece of legislation so widely misrepresented, and misunderstood, as the new health care law. We stopped counting the number of articles and items we turned out on the subject after the total reached 100.

Some of that is understandable. The debate went on for more than a year, while the different House and Senate bills changed their shape constantly.  The final law was the product of an awkward two-step legislative dance that first enacted the Senate’s version, then quickly amended it with a reconciliation “fix.” No wonder people are confused.

And even now the misrepresentations continue. The new law is no longer a moving target, but some opponents persist in making false or exaggerated claims about it. Our inboxes are filled with messages asking about assertions that the new law:

• Requires patients to be implanted with microchips. (No, it doesn’t.)
• Cuts benefits for military families and retirees. (No. The TRICARE program isn’t affected.)
• Exempts Muslims from the requirement to obtain coverage. (Not specifically. It does have a religious exemption, but that is intended for Old Order Amish.)
• Allows insurance companies to continue denying coverage to children with preexisting conditions. (Insurance companies have agreed not to exploit a loophole that might have allowed this.)
• Will require 16,500 armed IRS agents to enforce. (No. Criminal penalties are waived.)
• Gives President Obama a Nazi-like “private army.” (No. It provides a reserve corps of doctors and other health workers for emergencies.)
• “Exempts” House and Senate members. (No. Their coverage may not be as good as before, in fact.)
• Covers erectile-dysfunction drugs for sex offenders. (Just as it was before the new law, those no longer in jail can buy any insurance plan they choose.)
• Provides federal funding for abortions. (Not directly. But neither side in the abortion debate is happy with the law.)

You can go to the FactCheck site and read their analysis of the points given above.

Is paying unemployment benefits a crime?

Senator Tom Coburn, Republican Senator of my native state of Oklahoma thinks that extending payment of unemployment benefits to the jobless amounts to a crime, unless money is found to pay for it.

He says, “It is theft,” because it is essentially stealing from future generations.

On the other hand, Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, thinks the real injustice is holding up badly needed help to the jobless. He says, “It is as if a tornado hit their home or a flood wiped out their community. It is an emergency, and we respond to emergencies with emergency spending.”

It is a classic display of a difference between the Libertarian, Republican and Democrat’s thinking.

Coburn, a fiscal conservative, is against spending money the federal government doesn’t have. Few of us would disagree with that. If you don’t have it, don’t spend it.

Yet, what do you do if you are faced with an emergency? Borrow the money or not?

Look at New Orleans following hurricane Katrina. That was an emergency of major proportions. Thousands were homeless. Scores of people were drowning. Relief had to be provided. What could the Louisiana state and federal government do? Decline assistance on the ground they didn’t have nor could find the money to come to the aid of the citizens of Louisiana? New Orleans has a heavy population of the poor. Why spend money you have to borrow helping them? Are they worth helping?

Wouldn’t that be just another display of some kind of wealth redistribution from the wealthy to the poor by the government? Is that the Libertarian way? The Republican way? The Democratic way? The Tea Party way?

Now put yourself in the place of one of those unfortunate souls in New Orleans? Odds are you’d do whatever you had to do to escape the agony of your predicament.

So, would Senator Coburn maintain his position of refusing financial aid to Louisiana and the gulf coast if the money had to be borrowed? I don’t know.

Is governmental response coming to the aid of people caught in such turmoil a socialist act? Is it defensible in a capitalistic economic system? Certainly there is no profit to be gained. Who is to make the decision?

If you are jobless, through no fault of your own, your kids sitting at the bare dinner table, the electric bill is overdue—VEA is threatening to cut off your power, the mortgage payment or rent is due and the mortgagor is on the verge of foreclosing on your home, the landlord on eviction. You can only find five dollars in your pocket and no income. What do you do?

Do you head to the unemployment office to pick up your unemployment check—to be told your benefit had expired? Then go off to the welfare department, hat in hand, seeking welfare assistance?

Would it concern you that you might be taking money from the wealthy by doing so, or increasing a debt your descendants may wind up paying for? Or that you were taking assistance from a government being criticized as being socialist?

Is that what a self-professed Christian nation would do?

What if you knew that Business Insider, a financial management resource center, found that in 2007 the top 1 percent owned over a third of the nation’s wealth while the bottom 50 percent had a measly 2.5 percent and that you are taking some of the wealth of that top 1 percent?

Would you take that unemployment and welfare help if you were a Libertarian, Republican, Democrat, or member of the Tea Party? Of course you would.

Marla Turner Hello Friends:
With a House vote expected to take place this coming Sunday, our country stands on the precipice of historic legislation that will begin the process of reforming health care as we know it. The journey to get to this place has been a long and difficult one, with challenges from every perspective. Our country is divided over this issue, but more importantly, people are dying every day because of it. And that is why I support this legislation.

 
I know the bill is not perfect. It leaves too many people out. It’s been watered down. Corporations will find ways to get around certain provisions. It takes too long before certain provisions go into effect. Yes, yes, yes. But that old adage of “until you walk a mile in a man’s shoes” is very appropriate for this situation. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: whoever is willing to let this bill die because it’s not perfect is willing to thousands of people die right now who could otherwise be saved. And getting this legislation passed is just the FIRST step of what will likely be a years-long process.

 
So we’ve got two days left. Please help pass this legislation.

In my home state of Nevada, Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV) announced her support earlier this morning. If you want to call and thank her, she is at (202) 225-3252. Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-NV) is still undecided. She can be reached at (202) 225-5965. And I called Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV) who is opposed to the bill and told him all the reasons I support this bill. I know I’m not going to change his mind, but it was fun nonetheless. (202) 225-6155.

There are phone banks in all our communities. Check with your local Organizing For America office or MoveOn group and find out what’s happening near you. Make some calls. Here are some other tools and reference materials that may help you.

IMMMEDIATE Benefits of Legislation

Offer tax credits to small businesses to purchase coverage
1. Prohibit pre-existing condition exclusions for children in all new plans
2. Provide immediate access to insurance for uninsured Americans who are uninsured because of a pre-existing condition through a temporary high-risk pool
3. Prohibit dropping people from coverage when they get sick in all individual plans
4. End lifetime limits and restrictive annual limits on benefits in all plans
5. Require premium rebates to enrollees from insurers with high administrative expenditures and require public disclosure of the percent of premiums applied to overhead costs
6. Ensure consumers have access to an effective internal and external appeals process to appeal new insurance plan decisions
7. Require plans to cover an enrollee’s dependent children until age 26
8. Require new plans to cover preventative services and immunizations without cost-sharing
9. Relief on the Donut Hole

For more info on this, visit http://www.facebook.com/l/bf36b;www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-scher/fixing-the-health-care-me_b_499728.html.

How and When Health Insurance Reform Will Be Implemented

 
An excellent summation from Rachel Maddow here: http://www.facebook.com/l/bf36b;www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNy4f31-K3k&feature=player_embedded

How The Bill Affects the Federal Deficit

The Congressional Budget Office released their report on March 18th, saying that this bill will CUT THE DEFICIT by $130 billion in the first ten years (2010 – 2019) and cuts the deficit by $1.2 trillion in the second ten years. For the record, that’s more deficit reduction than any bill up to now, than either the House or Senate bill, and more coverage than the Senate bill.

See the full report here: http://www.facebook.com/l/bf36b;www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/3/18/847405/-CBO-Numbers-Are-Out

Myths and Lies About the Bill

See this flier from the White House containing info that dispels such myths as “death panels” and the like. http://www.facebook.com/l/bf36b;www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/Health_Insurance_Reform_PDF_1.pdf

Text of the Reconciliation Bill

You can find it and the history of the bill here: http://www.facebook.com/l/bf36b;www.rules.house.gov/bills_details.aspx?NewsID=4606

Democrats to Watch and Call

Where they stand today, how they voted last November, and how to get in touch with them can be found at http://www.facebook.com/l/bf36b;www.cnn.com/interactive/2010/03/politics/health.care.votes/index.html?hpt=Sbin
(This list may not be accurate, check link above for most current)
Arizona Gabrielle Giffords
Arkansas Mike Ross
Florida Suzanne Kosmas Allen Boyd
Georgia John Barrow
Idaho Walt Minnick
Illinois Jerry Costello Debbie Halvorson Dan Lipinski Jerry Costello
Indiana Baron Hill Brad Ellsworth Joe Donnelly
Louisiana Anh Cao
Massachusetts Stephen Lynch
Minnesota James Oberstar
Mississippi Travis Childers
Nevada Shelley Berkley
New Jersey John Adler
New Mexico Ann Kirkpatrick Harry Teague
New York Tim Bishop Michael Arcuri Bill Owens Scott Murphy Michael McMahon
North Carolina Health Schuler
North Dakota Earl Pomeroy
Ohio Zack Space Marcy Kaptur Steve Driehaus
Oregon Kurt Schrader
Pennsylvania Chris Carney Mike Doyle Jason Altmire Paul Kanjorski Kathy Dahlkemper
Tennessee Lincoln Davis John Tanner
Texas Solomon Ortiz
Utah Jim Matheson
Virginia Glenn Nye Rick Boucher
Washington Brian Baird
West Virginia Alan Mollohan

And get up to the minute status updates about the votes for health care reform here:
http://www.facebook.com/l/bf36b;www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/19/health-care-whip-count-li_n_505709.html

Thank you for doing your part to make history. We did it once, remember? Let’s do it again. Thank you for your support and all you do!

I leave you with this great tweet Kim H.C. posted earlier today:

“A bunch of Democrats lost their seats in 1966 b/c they voted for Medicare. I’m guessing they don’t regret it.”

My guess is that the majority Democrats who vote in favor of the current bill won’t regret it either, nor will they lose their seats – because we will be there to back them up.

With love and light -
Marla

And thanks Marla for putting this all together. Great job.

Jon Ralston of Face to Face interviews Republican candidate Sue Lowden about her position on reformation of health care in the U.S.

The Tea Party is out today protesting health care reform with their trademark signs. Huffington Post has a number of them along with a poll where you can classify the signs from a range of lame to totally outrageous.

I picked one of them here to give you an idea.

[Source: Huffington Post]

While the Senate is almost certain to remove the controversial Nebraska deal known as the “Cornhusker Kickback” in a final health-care bill, President Obama’s efforts to cut out other state-specific arrangements are drawing resistance from lawmakers.

Such deals include a provision exempting Florida from some Medicare cuts, an issue Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) raised at the bipartisan health summit, as well as extra Medicaid cash for Massachusetts and Vermont.

“We’ve made it clear to the Senate that the president’s position in the final legislation should not contain provisions that favor a single state or a single district differently than others,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said this week.

But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s spokesperson responded: “We’re going to do what we have to do to get a bill out of the House and Senate.” He said of the White House’s wish: “We’ll certainly keep it in mind as we pull together a final bill.”

Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT) also defended the extra money for his state on the basis that Vermont already provides generous benefits to its residents before reform and shouldn’t be “penalized for doing the right thing.”

And Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) is pushing back against efforts to cut out a provision granting Medicare benefits to residents of a single town in his state that’s suffered from mining-related health problems. But first, health-care must pass the House.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich talks to Benjamin Sarlin about being the lone liberal “no” vote and Obama’s 11th-hour campaign to win him over.

[Source: The Daily Beast]