Blogosphere all in a tizzy over bartering for health care idea

By J. Patrick Coolican

Thursday, April 22, 2010 | 2 a.m.

Sue Lowden’s campaign for U.S. Senate has hit a crisis this week.

The Republican front-runner to unseat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid reiterated a much-ridiculed idea she floated recently that consumers should “barter” for health care.

Now those comments have gone viral — in Internet lexicon — becoming the subject of withering blog attacks and YouTube videos.

Here’s what she said on the Reno TV show “Nevada Newsmakers”: “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.”

It was an attack ad that wrote itself — short, humorous and filled with visual imagery, including chickens and house painters.

Bartering — trading a good or service for another good or service — is alive and well on websites such as craigslist, and as the Lowden campaign pointed out, in doctors’ offices across Nevada and the country.

Still, that would seem to be more of a symptom of the nation’s health care problems, not a potential solution, as Lowden spokesman Robert Uithoven acknowledged Wednesday.

Lowden, a wealthy casino owner, risks seeming out of touch, which would be a damaging development because Republicans planned on using that line of attack on Reid.

“Her whole argument is that Reid is out of touch,” said David Damore, UNLV political scientist.

Jennifer Duffy, analyst with the Cook Political Report, said Lowden’s comments are defensible but badly framed. “It doesn’t strike me as a difficult thing to push back on, yet Democrats have been feasting on this for almost two weeks,” she said.

The pushback, if tardy, has begun.

Uithoven said, “If people want to see Sue Lowden’s plan, it’s been on the website since November, when Harry Reid was using Nevada taxpayer dollars to bribe other senators to support his health care plan Nevadans didn’t want.” Uithoven was referring to deals Reid engineered to help the home states of senators in return for their votes for the health care legislation. The deals were later rescinded.

Lowden’s health care plan, aside from her offhand suggestions about bartering, includes tort reform to make it harder to sue doctors for medical malpractice; allowing consumers to buy health insurance across state lines; and proposals making it easier for small businesses and individuals to buy health insurance.

Her website appears to have been invaded, if results from a poll on the site are a guide. It asks the question, “Do you think government-run health care will improve the quality of our care?” As of late Wednesday, a surprising 60 percent, or more than 13,000 respondents, said “Yes.”

Also surprising, Lowden’s chief Republican opponents — Danny Tarkanian, John Chachas and Sharron Angle — haven’t tried to leverage Lowden’s comments.

Duffy said such an attack wouldn’t play that well in a Republican primary. Damore said he suspects the other candidates are preserving their resources in advance of the June 8 primary.

Uithoven said he looked forward to a full discussion of health care during the campaign: “We’re happy to debate Harry Reid about his vision for health care reform against our vision of health care reform,” he said.

“He hasn’t been here much in the past 30 years, and we’re happy to bring him around to doctors who are also small businessmen and businesswomen and have them explain to Reid how they negotiate lower prices to avoid insurance hassles and government-run health care.”