Some thoughts on how pizza would be bought if we had to use the healthcare financing system. A customer would call a local pizza franchise and order the pizza but then the pizza franchise would have to verify that the customer was in network and eligible to buy discounted pizza from that particular pizza franchise. The pizza franchise would then contact the customers Pizza buying service to verify that the customer was eligible for onions on his pizza. The pizza franchise would have to document that the customer was an appropriate candidate to consume pizza with onions and offer other appropriate alternatives such as a healthy salad or an unhealthy burger and explain why pizza with onions was the appropriate food for this customer. The pizza franchise would then collect a 20% copay from the customer for his pizza and then submit a bill for the remaining portion to the customers pizza buying plan. The pizza buying service would then reject the pizza franchise bill for the remaining portion because the pizza franchise forgot to put the correct code on the invoice for vegetarian pizza with onions. The claim gets resubmitted and then rejected again and no payment is made because the customer just prior to ordering his pizza changed pizza buying services and that service does not contract with the particular pizza franchise that he ordered the pizza from. Yes the eligibility service told them the customer was eligible but deep down in the fine print of the contract the pizza buying service says eligibility information they provide to the eligibility clearinghouse is not a gaurantee of payment. The customer gets his pizza but complains that it arrived late because of all of the eligibility checking the pizza franchise had to do before it could make his pizza. The frustrated pizza franchise now raises prices because they only get paid 50 cents on the dollar because of the bizarre rules of the pizza buying service and to Congress and the President decide that to fix all these problems the pizza franchise needs to implement an electronic ordering and documenation system. The pizza franchise decides it is just to much of a headache to run a pizza franchise and decides to sell his franchise back to the franchisor because they have more clout to bargain with the pizza buying services. The pizza franchisee now works for the "man" and lives a life of comfort making much less money but not working as hard and dealing with all of the hassles of running a pizza franchise.