My Horse Comma If It Weren't For

So the other day I heard the dumbest idea I've ever heard in my life. I'm seriously worried about getting an aneurysm. A highly educated student in my Healthcare Management class touted the following idea of his as the potential savior to all our country's healthcare woes: a single-payer system that is NOT run by the government, but by a for-profit company that could operate as if in a market. His argument is that it would be more efficient, because the government is inefficient and markets are efficient.

OK, so basically his idea would play out like this: everyone in America gets on the same private health insurance plan and one company is immediately granted a complete and absolute monopoly by the federal government and told to run things efficiently. It's about this time that anyone who hasn't realized it should be informed that the main reasons the government isn't as efficient as the private sector are: (1) the government has no competition and (2) the government isn't responsible to shareholders who care about money only and is free to make other things its priority. Yes, it has problems, but let's take a private company that cares first and foremost about profit, remove the competition, and put everyone's healthcare in its hands.

Picture yourself with the following insurance plan: your plan is run by the worst HMO in American history, except THIS time, it has guaranteed business and doesn't have to worry about any of its customers switching to another healthcare plan of any kind or from any other provider.

There's a REASON people get aneurysms. They hear stuff like that and their brains try to process it to the point of suicide or spontaneous combustion. The entire time this kid was talking I kept fantasizing about being able to do 2 things, picking my jaw up off the floor and--more importantly--beating him repeatedly with a 3-foot fish. Just getting a giant sea bass, gripping it by the tail, and wailing on him was the only thing that was going to satisfy me. Unfortunately, the good Lord saw fit not to bless me with even a novelty carp, and I was forced to sit there trying not to look too appalled or otherwise rude.

I was proud of myself for not saying anything, though. Sometimes I feel the need to explain how wrong someone is so that they might learn and the class might not take the dumb ideas seriously...but this was so catastrophically dumb I figured the former was a losing battle and the latter was unnecessary.

My kingdom for a large fish that makes a funny electronic thumpy sound effect when someone is beaten with it...