Opinion: Paying your radiologist in radishes -- the latest healthcare insurance solution
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My throat’s sore, my temperature is 101 and I have chills. I’m going out into the garden and pull up some carrots so I can see the doctor.
A couple of legislators who hate the healthcare reform bill have been saying that, hey, Americans don’t need this law -- they have other ways of handling their healthcare costs. Like paying the bills with edibles.
Now, what do you think my health insurance company would say if I offered to pay my deductible in avocados? Okay, what if I throw in the tortilla chips too?
And what about that schedule of procedure costs that shows up on those ‘explanation of benefits’ forms? They’d need rewriting:
Appendectomy: 100 bushels of hard red wheat, 50 pecks of Royal Anne cherries, a gross of eggs (brown or white).
One week’s dialysis: six dozen homemade cinnamon rolls and a pound of fresh butter (unsalted).
Liver transplant: half a dozen dairy cows (guaranteed good milkers), and enough pasture for a year.
We can’t leave out elective procedures. A face-lift should bring at least a Fruit-of-the-Month Club membership, premium package, minimum one exotic fruit (guava, kiwi) included.
Would organic produce be more valuable? Could you get an ingrown toenail treated for either 5 pounds of organic local strawberries or 10 pounds of conventionally grown Mexican strawberries?
Could the doctor refuse to give me my test results if the tomatoes I paid him with turned out to be rotten?
It’s a nice cozy notion, and I’m sure it might have worked now and then for my great-grandparents on our farms, in an age when our intensely high-tech and high-cost care was undreamed-of by medicine, and when palliative care was the best that might be available for the critically ill or critically injured.
But try taking veg-med to the bank. Try getting a car loan on the strength of a steady income stream of root vegetables. Try sending an ER nurse to the teller window to pay her Visa bill with a dozen chickens and 10 lugs of Elberta peaches. Try fitting a champion Carolina Cross watermelon through the drive-up window at the Walgreen’s pharmacy.
The cold hard fact is that healthcare takes cold hard cash. Too much of it. Which is why we wind up with Mr. Potato Head notions like these -- which is to say, half-baked.
-- Patt Morrison
