Meet the next Senator from Nevada and learn about her Chickens for Health Care initiative

Sue Lowden, one of the Republican candidates for the Nevada Senate seat currently held by Sen. Reid, currently holds a substantial advantage in polling, and will likely become the next senator from the Silver State.

And, she has quite a novel approach to health care reform. Namely, she wants to take health care back to the “good old days,” when our forebears bartered or haggled for care.

Here’s what she said:

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

I don’t really feel the need to go any further with this, except to note that it is, at least, an idea. One that I’m pretty sure she got from watching too many late-night reruns of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. I think the Economist actually put it best:

That said, I don’t think this paper can come out in support of a sharp move towards reliance on a barter economy. The consensus weighs firmly in favour of the view that the existence of money has been good for the economy.