Tennessee GOP State Rep.: Some People Pay For Health Care With Vegetables

Tennessee GOP State Rep.: Some People Pay For Health Care With Vegetables

It turns out that Senate candidate Sue Lowden (R-NV) is not the only politician out there who has promoted the idea of the barter system as part of health care. Yet another pro-barter Republican, state Rep. Mike Bell (R-TN), has been talking up the practices of Mennonites who pay doctors with vegetables.

Bell's made his comments last week, during discussion of a proposed state law that would attempt to nullify the federal health care insurance mandate in the state of Tennessee. Here is a transcript of a dialogue in committee between Bell and Democratic state Rep. Joe Towns, courtesy of the Nashville Scene, as Bell explained that many people get along without insurance:

Bell: They're some of the healthiest people you have ever seen. They pay cash when they go to the doctor. They work out arrangements with the hospitals if their children have to be hospitalized. This is an individual choice that we're talking about.

Towns: You're saying they pay cash? For organ transplants and cancer and heart cases, they pay cash?

Bell: I said they pay cash or work out other arrangements. I know for a fact. I know someone in the medical field who has been paid with vegetables from the Mennonite community.


State Rep. Mike Bell (R-TN), vegetables, and a chicken

More:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/04/tennessee-gop-state-rep-some-people-pay-for-health-care-with-vegetables.php

....to use a substitute for consumables that could fit in one's pocket.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Chickens-for-Checkups/113150752051221?ref=sgm



:rofl:

Love how they stubbornly insist on making themselves look like complete fools.

'GONNA HAVE ME A BABY PA!'
'THATS OKAY MA I HAVE ME A BAG OF TURNIPS FOR OL DOC JONES!'

live in cities and cannot grow produce or raise chickens or fatted calves or any other darn thing that would pay our doctors and hospitals the hundreds or thousands they demand to provide us with health care, routine or otherwise. I said this in another thread but it bears repeating. My husband survived MRSA in 2008. For his hospital room alone, without tests, doctor fees, lab work or supplies they settled with his health insurance company for $1.5 million dollars. It took them three appeals, and they had wanted more. Many of the doctors negotiated settlements for varying amounts with the insurance companies too. The rest we are stuck with even though our insurance had a catastrophic benefit clause where they were supposed to pick up co payments and disallowed amounts for both preferred providers and out of network providers at different rates. They would not give me anything in writing to confirm when the catastrophic kicked in. They would not give me a definite date. I had figured it out by dollar amount but they wouldn't confirm it. So here we are sucking for survival and feeling grateful to have insurance at all while some of these pinheads talk about how a chicken or some produce would have made it all go away.

So while they are proselytizing the wonders of the barter system do they understand that barter is fully taxable just like cash to the people who accept the bartered goods for fees? It was one of the income questions we used to ask as a part of our audits when I was working and we were inquiring about income. I think it is based on what the service is worth not on what you use to barter with, but I never encountered it, so if I'm wrong please correct me. There used to be groups of people who traded goods and services instead of using cash, thinking they would not be taxed. It went to court and they found out they were wrong. Can't you see a doctor wrangling about what ten chickens and one rutabaga were worth? ;)

And they are the people who are suppose to be thinking about it the most.

Isn't that sad. Just sad.

Going through a serious illness with the cost and having to battle for every bit of care your loved one needs and would not get with out your help, you do learn the system. My husband will be affected for the rest of his life. He needs a machine to help him breathe at night.

We all need to think of ways to help people who don't have insurance, not even bad insurance and to provide answers to the people who want to keep them from having it. You might not think so, but we were lucky. Many people are not. Just ask the women with breast cancer who were depending on Wellpoint.

folks in that state should petition to have him take his salary in chickens.

His salary in chickens - why didn't *HE* think of that??!! Excellent suggestion!

do you think we really need the care? It makes no sense... I have extraordinary ongoing medical care, if the insurance could drop me I'm sure they would... they can't but they still give me HELL over paying the damn bills. It's bad enough to be sick, but then to be sick and have to fight for the bills to get paid, it gets to be a bit freaking much.... Yeh, barter 50-100 grand a year away, what the hell do I have that's worth that?

dermatologist in one of the western suburbs has a clientele made up mainly of Canadas looking for treatment for skin cancers because they have to wait to long in Canada for it.

Next he'll be telling us they pay for the treatment with hockey pucks.

Never trust a politician when they say they know something "for a fact".

B-)

to get the hip replacement I need. That said - any orthopedic surgeons are welcome to submit bids. I grow everything but potatoes and okra. None are diamond encrusted.

I shouldn't think there's much doubt about whether he qualifies as a vegetable.