A lot of snarky jokes are being spun from Republican hopeful Sue Lowden’s suggestion that we all just go back to a simpler time when you could barter a chicken for your medical bill. The best of these is a chicken-conversion site that helps patients and doctors calculate what is a fair price in chickens for common medical procedures. There is also help for doctors who may have trouble finding a place to keep their earnings –state of the art coops and all. And serious illness, of course, could be more expensive — for that you need cows.

All jokes aside, you’d think that doctors and nurses would sometimes be moved by compassion to donate time or waive fees to patients in crisis. And you’d be right because they do. The problem is that labs and diagnostic tests cost money. That’s why cutting a program such as the Women’s Cancer Screening Program hits poor people so hard. Getting free care, and even free medicine is relatively easy compared to blood tests, x-rays, and more. Even when you cut down to essentials, some of those tests are essential and you can’t bring a chicken to the phlebotomy lab, live or barbecued.

But some folks miss the country doc who would come to your house and take out your appendix with a spoon. I think they should find an old-time doctor like R.V.Pierce, MD. (1840-1914) He would have had no use for the plethora of expensive tests that doctors today can’t function without. That’s because his treatment for every disease was a bottle of Dr. Pierce’s Golden Medical Discovery. He sold enough to build a huge Sanitarium and Invalid’s Hotel in Buffalo, New York and win a race for Congress as a Republican. (He quit after a year)

Not only could Dr. Pierce cure cancer, he could also cure such conditions as morning erections in males. After terrifying them with predictions of lost manhood for any who did not slap a cold, wet cloth upon themselves on awakening. Ah, the good old days.

It’s true that people died of diseases that are easily cured today. But in many conversations with Tea Party folks at the health care Town Halls, I had it explained to me that there’s nothing we can or should do about the fact that some people are just going to die. It’s not immoral like abortion, it’s natural like infant mortality due to lack of prenatal care. It’s God’s will.

It’s hard to understand why so many people can’t accept financial rationing and refuse to suffer silently. The way we’re going, we’re going to end up like Canada where people not only don’t bring chickens to the doctor’s office, they think health care is a public good, like roads or education. The Canadians don’t know how bad they have it. Health care security may seem like a felicitous condition for now, but just like that foolish young man who wakes up with a smile on his face– perdition awaits. Vote for Dr. Pierce. He wasn’t afraid to invent diseases and he’ll sell you the cure.