Nev. Senate Candidate's 'Chicken' Run Stirs Debate

LAS VEGAS (April 22) -- It may come to be known as the squawk heard 'round the world and, on the face of it, it strikes many as absurd and funny.

On April 6, Sue Lowden, the leading Republican candidate vying to take on Democratic Sen. Harry Reid in November, suggested to a crowd in rural Mesquite, Nev., that bartering with doctors could lower health care costs.

Then, on a Reno TV show on Monday, she reiterated the notion by recalling the days of old when folks "would bring a chicken to the doctor [or] they would say 'I'll paint your house.' ...I'm not backing down from that system."

Cue the laugh track. Jay Leno and Rachel Maddow both had their fun, mockers have delivered both live and packaged chickens to Lowden's campaign offices, Reid's office sent out a fundraising plea suggesting Lowden had "lost her mind" and campaign manager Robert Uithoven told AOL News he's preparing his candidate to expect people in chicken suits at upcoming public events.

One thing nobody in the Vegas or national press has done: examine whether it works.

The answer, it turns out, is sometimes. Several bartering exchanges exist online and, through that, thousands of Americans access certain health services every day. In fact, nearly two dozen providers in Nevada accept barter credits.

A Reno housecleaning service called Spring Fresh, for instance, is a member of ITEX Payment Systems, the nation's largest bartering company. Spring Fresh provides cleaning services to other ITEX members, who pay in a form of currency known as ITEX dollars. Spring Fresh's 35 employees have conventional health insurance, but they can also see chiropractors, doctors, dentists and optometrists who accept ITEX dollars in their area. Practitioners can then use ITEX dollars to, say, get their cars fixed or stay at a hotel.

"We have had employees and their children use it for dental emergencies, employees have used chiropractors, my family uses it," Spring Fresh owner Ali Hurlbert said.

For the most part, those bartering for health services are small businesses with services of value who make exchanges with providers who have gaps in their schedule to fill. ITEX spokesman Alan Zimmelman says there are more than 1,100 physicians and dentists in the system, though, and that many individuals have abilities or services -- lawn-mowing, painting, dog-walking -- that could accrue ITEX dollars.

In Maddow's lampooning of the notion on MSNBC on Wednesday, the host questioned whether the doctor could use the chickens Lowden suggested offering to pay the electric bill.

Zimmelman said Maddow misses the point.

"If you join the trade exchange and got extra business, then you're able to use the dollars you save on, say, the printing you get from the barter system to pay the electric bills," he said. "It does add to the bottom line."

Another bartering model is offered by Favorpals.com, a year-old site with 16,000 users who make direct deals rather than use an ITEX-like currency system. Owner Zeo Solomon said he made a special category for health care services recently because it has become a big part of the business, which sees about 1,000 deals a month with as many as 2,000 health care providers participating.

Through Favorpals.Com, Solomon said, a dentist provided a family a year of dental care in exchange for the remodeling of his new office, a psychologist provided sessions to a baker in exchange for cakes and a doctor provided medical advice to an English literature teacher who edited the doctor's writing for publication.

"In general, this is not the answer for the health care crisis in America, but this is one angle," Solomon said. "It's not the only solution, but it minimizes costs in some circumstances."

Lowden's campaign insisted the candidate never said it was her sole solution to reducing the cost of health care. Uithoven noted the bartering idea isn't even part of the positions on the topic that have been on her campaign website for months.

Yet to some extent, Uithoven conceded, turnabout is fair play. Lowden was the Nevada Republican Party chairwoman in 2008 when Barack Obama suggested people could conserve gas by checking the pressure on their cars tires. Nevada Republicans, under party direction, showed up at the then-Democratic presidential candidate's appearances here handing out tire gauges with a tag reading, "Obama's energy policy."

"There's similarities in that President Obama wasn't making a grand energy statement at the time, just as Sue Lowden was stating something also factual that wasn't a grand policy statement," Uithoven said. "It's political theater and it has nothing to do with substantive policy."

Still, Uithoven spun the situation too, expanding Lowden's suggestion and repeatedly using the phrase "negotiating, bargaining and bartering" with doctors in an AOL News interview. Las Vegas Sun political pundit Jon Ralston suggested last week that Lowden could minimize political damage by claiming she mean "bargaining" instead of "bartering," a suggestion Uithoven appeared to be trying to incorporate.

Lowden holds a large lead among the Republican field ahead of the June 8 primary in the most recent Las Vegas Review-Journal poll. Lowden also led the Senate majority leader 47-37 in Review-Journal poll results published last week.

Many pundits have suggested the barter notion could be a severe blow to Lowden that could breathe new life into Reid's persistently lousy poll numbers. Ralston and conservative pundit Chuck Muth, who has been supportive of Lowden, both suggested it could be her "Macaca moment," a reference to a 2006 epithet used by Republican George Allen that is credited in large part for his loss to Jim Webb in that year's Senate race in Virginia.

Uithoven dismissed the analogy, pointing to a gaffe by Reid that surfaced in the book "Game Change," in which the senator said in early 2008 that Obama was an appealing candidate because he is "light-skinned" and has no "Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."

"All Nevadans know who has committed a racial slur in this campaign," Uithoven said.