Medicare Should Be More Like a Pizza

by Herman Cain


Our Medicare system is facing a fiscal crisis. What we need to solve the financial crisis in our Medicare system is not a bunch of professional politicians. What we need is a businessman with the common sense understanding of how economics works, someone who knows how to run a successful enterprise, someone like me, Herman Cain, the former CEO and turnaround wizard of Godfather’s Pizza.

This visionary, Herman Cain, has taken major franchises with financial troubles and turned them around with my business know-how and ingenuity. And I can tell you that the biggest problem with Medicare that needs to be turned around is that it’s run from the top down by the Government. For example, let’s say that you were hungry and wanted to eat a pizza. Let me ask you – would you walk down to City Hall and ask the Government to bake you a deep-dish Omaha, Nebraska-style pizza pie? No, you wouldn’t, because Government bureaucrats are not particularly skilled in that particular trade! You would continue walking down the street until you arrived at a private business establishment specializing in the production of deep-dish Omaha, Nebraska-style pizza pies; for example, Godfather’s Pizza.

Medicare does not offer consumers a choice. Medicare says that the Government is going to distribute to everyone the same health insurance coverage at the same price regardless of their needs or desires. Imagine if you walked to the pizza parlor, you sit down at a table and the waitress serves you a vegetarian pizza with spinach, eggplant and artichokes – and you’re like, “Hey, I wanted pepperoni and anchovies!” And then the waitress is like “Tough – deal with it.” And then 10 minutes later the waitress serves you a side-order of Cinnasticks and you’re like “But I didn’t order these!” and she’s like “Yeah, well we’re serving it to you anyway”. And you, the customer, have to pay the bill at the end even though not one of your needs were efficiently met. That would be Big Government Socialism straight out of The Communist Manifesto, that’s what it would be. Just like Medicare.

As the founder of Godfather’s Pizza, I know that you need to offer your customers a choice to fit their personal needs. At Godfather’s Pizza, we have a menu of all the different sizes and toppings and various options available. Let’s say you the customer want a Meat Lover’s Pizza with pepperoni, bacon and meatballs – that is what you will be served. If you want a Hawaiian Pizza with a Stuffed Crust add-on – the free market will provide it with the utmost quality and efficiency. You order what you want, you pay for what you order – that is how capitalism works, my friend.

Therefore, if I – Herman Cain – am elected President, I will pledge to increase the range of options and flexibility offered to customers. I will call this initiative “Expanding the Medicare Menu”. Let’s say that you the customer wants just your basic insurance coverage for annual physicals and catastrophic care – you would pay for one price. But if you want toppings, that will cost you extra. If you want cancer insurance you pay an additional fee. If you want diabetes insurance you pay an additional fee. you the customer should be able to anticipate what sort of medical issues you might need to pay for in the foreseeable future and you pay for that topping. If you aren’t sleeping around then why should you pay for some promiscuous harlot’s abortion insurance? That would be like if you want a cheese pizza and the guy behind you in line wants broccoli and meatballs and both of you pay the same price! Socialism!

Another problem with Medicare is the free-rider problem. You have all these people who are working hard, paying their dues – those people should be able to get the Medicare coverage they deserve. But you have all these free-riders who choose not to work, who think that they can just sit on their booty and have society pay for their Medicare for them. That’s not right.

That would be like if you went into Godfather’s Pizza with your wife and kids and sit down on our patio and you order a Jumbo deep-dish pizza pie with peppers and mushrooms and a side of garlic knots. And then as you’re trying to enjoy your pizza which you paid for with your hard-earned money – and some bum on the street walks up and says “Hey Mister, could you please gimme a slice?” That would be bogus, that’s what it would be. If that happened to me, I’d say “Hey Bum, can’t you see that I’m trying to enjoy my hard-earned dinner with my family? Why don’t you go buy your own pizza pie?”

Our Medicare system today is run like a soup kitchen for a bunch of homeless bums. If you want to be served, you have to wait on line. And then you have to fill out all these forms to prove that you are in fact a bum. And the servers take so long because not even staffed by professionals but by volunteers. And those few times when it is actually professionals working at Medicare they feel like they can serve you all slow and stuff because they’re unionized and they can’t get fired no matter how bad their service is. That is why the service is so inferior – because you get what you pay for, and when it’s a bunch of corrupt union bosses and patchouli-stinking trustafarian rabble-rousers running the assembly line, your service is going to be of poor quality.

At Godfather’s Pizza our service is prompt and speedy. We guarantee that if you order your pizza delivered that it will be at your doorstep in 30 minutes. If your pizza gets delivered in 40 minutes then you shouldn’t tip the delivery boy and that would be their punishment for such poor service. Likewise, we should bust the public employees union that the Medicare workers are in and restructure their pay rates so they get compensated on commission and with tips. That way, they will bust their butts to get health insurance provided to the customer quickly with no waiting and no lines.

The Liberals might say, “Herman Cain, I disagree with you. I think that Medicare should be run by a Big Government Nanny State because what about all the lazy bums who can’t afford to pay for health insurance? We have to tolerate some inefficiency to help those lazy bums.” To those excusers of sloth and enablers of dependence, I, Herman Cain, say this: “No, you are wrong. You are wrong because those bums should get their act together and pull themselves by their own bootstraps and get a job so they can pay for health insurance themselves.”

Those mollycoddle Liberals would probably say “But Herman Cain, you are being insensitive to all the lazy bums who are unemployed, they can’ t get a job because the economy is in a deep, prolonged recession.” Well to those mollycoddles I would say “Do you think that I , Herman Cain, came to be who I am because I was just handed life on a silver platter? No, I have my job as the CEO of Godfather’s Pizza because I have a demonstrated record of accomplishment and success in the business world – that’s why I am employed and that’s how I can afford to have health insurance.

If everyone could just believe in the American Dream like I do and pull themselves up by their own bootstraps then even the lazy bums could be the Founder and CEO of their own business. Then everyone would be able to pay for their own health insurance on Medicare’s New and Improved Health Insurance Menu like at Godfather’s Pizza. And then everyone would have the health insurance package they want at a price they can afford a low price, with no lines, no waiting and no Big Government telling them what to do. Now that is what America is all about!