If Hospitals Were Like Restaurants

I was in the car yesterday with my dad listening to the Sean Hannity show, and Sean graced us all with this arrow of truth to the heart: We don't need to fix health care, because hospitals, like restaurants, are a part of the free-market economy. If they were really that bad, consumers would just choose other hospitals, and the rotten ones would be forced to improve or close down.

Here's what the world would be like if that were true. If hospitals really were like restaurants.

You're wandering down the street on a warm Friday night with a couple of girlfriends wondering where to go to dinner when somebody pops out from around the corner and knocks you insensible. You wake up strapped into a white-linen dinner table at Ming Tsai's Blue Ginger, and the appetizer has been pre-determined. A napkin has been tucked in like a bib around your neck, and you don't have any pants on.

They ask you if you have any allergies. You're dazed an a little confused, because the menu is twelve pages long with an explicit statement that you don't actually get to choose anything, and that U.S. Health Department requires you to waive your right to read the soups. You sign a release statement at the end of the page stating that Ming Tsai has eaten far more food in his life than you, and has fed many more people than you will ever feed, and any notion of "choice" you may be foolishly entertaining is hereby waived.

A waiter comes by the table and asks you if you have ever eaten bell peppers, shucked an oyster or have been to Africa. He will proceed to ignore all of this. If you are a woman, you'll see him examine you up and down, pause, and scrawl "PREGNANT- NO SUSHI" in a large, messy hand.

The plates begin arriving... plate after plate. More than you could possibly eat. Several plates that look like things you shouldn't eat. You're getting nervous. You're beginning to wonder how much this will cost.

Everything stops dead.

The waiter looks at you like you're dribbling and crazy. Like you're frothing at the mouth. And not just from that queer-looking Lebanese crustacean you ate ten minutes ago.

You're feeling awkward. You apologize for asking. The waiter looks positively scandalized.

Someone whispers that you'll be lucky if he doesn't tell Chef Ming what you just asked. Somebody jokes that next you're going to ask to see a menu.

A cadaver gets left out by your table sometime after the second course that doesn't get wheeled away 'til dessert.

And three months later when the monumental bill arrives, you ask if you can negotiate, because that funny Middle Eastern lobster gave you the runs for three days, and if you want to talk picayune details, you were kidnapped. There is silence on the other end of the line.

"But you chose that lobster."