Eugene Robinson: The Good Ol' Days Before Anesthesia

[babylonsister]

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_good_ol_days_before_anesthesia_20100429/

The Good Ol’ Days Before Anesthesia
Posted on Apr 29, 2010

By Eugene Robinson


If you haven’t heard the name Sue Lowden, brace yourself. She is a Republican who might well become a U.S. senator from Nevada, and judging by her idea for containing health care costs—critics call it “chickens for checkups”—she threatens to make Sarah Palin sound like some kind of pointy-headed policy wonk. :)

Yes, I said chickens.

snip//

Except for the larger point I promised. Lowden’s gaffe was part of a disturbing current in American politics these days: Nostalgia for a golden age that never was.

Her words conjured the image of a kindly old man named Doc who made the rounds of frontier homesteads, presumably in his horse and buggy, and fixed everybody up, good as new—“Just pay me when you can, Sue.” But the truth is that in those days, doctors routinely watched people die from diseases that are easily cured today; simple infections and even childbirth carried grave risks. The care that Doc could give wasn’t worth much more than a chicken.

Today’s reality is that Nevada is a highly urbanized state—almost three-fourths of its residents live in and around Las Vegas—where the collapse of housing prices, the epidemic of foreclosures and the lack of access to health care are as acute as anywhere in the nation. No wonder some people might find a sepia-toned fantasy more attractive.

This same false-memory syndrome infects the tea party movement, which harks back to some imagined time when the United States was a sylvan utopia where everyone walked around peacefully carrying guns and quoting Thomas Jefferson. But this was a big, messy, complicated country even when Jefferson was president, with sharp conflicts over slavery, economic policy and the rights of the individual versus the welfare of all. To mention just a few.

Oh, and doctors really preferred to be paid in money. Not livestock.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

1. LOL..my grandma grew up in the depression era 30s and said that Lowden must be

"a little bit crazy"

She said that sometimes they'd give the guy who would check on their animals some food to look at them, but never a doctor.

[babylonsister]

2. I recall docs making house calls, at least our doc did, but we

didn't raise chickens, so doubt he was paid that way. ;)

[tanyev]

3. Actually, turkeys were preferred.

A turkey leg is much sturdier to bite down on during that operation without anesthesia.

[babylonsister]

4. OK...

:spray: Lowden's prolly already thought of that!

[Cha]

5. Here's an ad from The Patriot Majority on what the person in

the street thinks of Chickens-4-Checkups.

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/senate-republicans/chickens-for-checkups-debuts-in-tv-ad-campaign/

[Zoeisright]

6. There's a special kind of stupid when people vote to eject a powerful

Senator like Reid in favor of a nobody nutcase like Sue "Clucker" Lowden. I mean, it's just plain DUMB.