President Me (22 page)

NO DESTINATION OR THEME WEDDINGS:
Not only are these exotic location weddings a pain in the ass for your friends and relatives to get to, but they're usually a bad sign for the marriage. If you get married in a bikini, the average length of your marriage is about the same as the bride's pubes. The marriage that lasts longest is the one in the nice suit, but not the tux, because the one in the suit is the second marriage. And none of that theme-wedding, “we both love roller coasters, so we're getting married on the Comet at Six Flags” bullshit. I don't care how much you both love SCUBA, in my America the underwater wedding is going to be torpedoed by the coast guard.

Like the elaborate proposal, this also fucks up your nonmarried friends. When a guy takes the chick he's been dating for four years to the destination wedding, there's gonna be a long flight back from Maui. She's pissed. Remember, she's got all of her supercunty friends telling her, “If you were the one, Steve would have said something by now.” Chicks also have that marriage clock in their head. If you take a trip with a woman you've been dating for more than two and a half years, she's going to spend the whole vacation anticipating a proposal every time you stop at the scenic overlook or checking her pomegranatini glass for a ring. And when it doesn't come, she'll spend the whole flight home with her arms folded, looking like she just smoked a bongload of cat shit. She's disgusted with you and you'll have no idea why. “We swam with dolphins, we saw sea turtles. What's up?” (SILENCE.) So no destination weddings, or my government will not recognize your marriage. And for the aforementioned nonmarried-but-still-dating couple, if you're past that thirty-month mark, there will be no vacations at all. Even if you win a trip on
The Price Is Right
, you have to sell that shit.

THE WEDDING REGISTRY:
Weddings cost too much. Back in the day it used to be that the father of the bride would pay for the wedding and you'd get a cow as a dowry and that'd be that. A simple transaction—I'll give you a musket and three geese for your daughter. Now all you get is a bunch of debt and the stink eye from a guy whose precious little girl you're stealing. Then people try to make up for the cost of the wedding with the registry, and ask for a bunch of shit from Williams-Sonoma that they're never going to use. They have to try to earn back the cost of the reception one crystal goblet at a time. (Williams-Sonoma is crazy expensive. They have spices in that place I can't afford, and $500 pressure cookers. Pressure cooker is at the top of the list of things that you only get as a wedding gift.)

So from here on out, all wedding registries have a two-item maximum. First thing on that list—a basket. Everything else, cash. It shouldn't be called a reception. It should be called a “pay off my credit card” party and every just comes with an envelope of cash like that scene in
Goodfellas
. And on that note . . .

NO CASH BARS AT THE RECEPTION:
If you can't afford an open bar, you can't afford to be married. It's like my rule about powdered milk. If you can't afford real milk, you shouldn't be allowed to have kids.

ANNULMENTS FOR ALL:
A lot of states have laws putting limitations on annulments if you've been married for more than a certain amount of time. I'm lifting all of those laws, especially for anyone who gets married young. If you can't go down to the store and buy a six-pack, it doesn't matter how long you've been married, you should be able to get an annulment. If you've gotten married at nineteen and a half, you shouldn't have to go through a divorce. In fact we'll fast-track ending your shitty relationship before you crap out a kid for us taxpayers to take care of. I don't want you to produce offspring before you realize that the guy who loaded you up with Natural Light and humped you in his Honda behind the high school football stadium is not your soul mate.

7

THE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
AND HUMAN SERVICES
 

As
president, I'm going to get the government out of health care. I know this is going to piss off the Michael Stipes and Michael Moores of the world, but I just don't think having health care is a right. Health care is a commodity like anything else. I don't look at it any different than housing; you've got to earn it. Somehow we decided health care is something you get cradle to the grave no matter how much, or how little, you've contributed to the system. I know that some people on the bottom need our help, but once people figure out that it's free down there, the bottom all of a sudden starts getting bigger.

I don't know why I seem to be the only one who understands that when the government provides something for free—whether it's food, housing, or health care—there is a human cost. The government may be handing you a free block of cheese but they are taking away your motivation to get a job and buy your own fucking cheese. And what more powerful motivator is there to get up, get work, and get insurance than the fact that not having it could literally kill you?

This is the inherent flaw in government-mandated health care. It's dependent on young people purchasing insurance they're probably not going to need, in order to fill the coffers for the older people who do. But when I was in my late teens and early twenties, I didn't have two nickels to rub together and if I did I certainly wasn't spending them on health insurance. That was beer money. Why do we expect better from the current generation of twentysomethings? Have they demonstrated an abundance of long-term thinking and self-sacrifice? Fuck no. Unless that health insurance comes with a free copy of
Grand Theft Auto 5
, they're not interested.

And why do we think for a second that having the government involved will make things better when it comes to health care? Now, I'm not entertaining the paranoid “death panel” ideas that ignite some of those on the far end of the right wing. I think the government is incompetent, not evil.

I'd actually be okay with death panels if I thought the government wouldn't fuck them up. The reason we're in such a shitty position when it comes to health care costs is because people are living way too long. I think we have an absurd perspective on death and dying. We want to prolong life forever but never think about the costs. We just hand over our insurance card and think, “Put it on my tab.” We don't realize what that's costing the entire system.

Which is why as president, I will be calling for two initiatives:

First, I demand an end to all the antismoking propaganda. I recognize that smoking is bad for you. But as far as overall cost impact on the system, the last fifteen years a person in their eighties or nineties lives cost far more than the six months of chemo a person has before finally dying of lung cancer at fifty-six.

And who at this point doesn't know that smoking is bad? It's been the broken record playing for the last thirty years. And it's only getting louder, more in-your-face, and more disgusting. I'll be attempting to eat dinner, look up at the TV, and see an antismoking PSA with the chick smoking through the trach hole in her neck. Yuck.

We've even gone past the repeated refrains about secondhand smoke to thirdhand smoke. Now, it is as if I could walk through a cloud of smoke, it will get stuck on my coat, and then when I hang it up at home, the smoke particles are going to jump off in the middle of the night, go upstairs, and rape my kid's lungs.

Being a smoker is worse in this society than being a deadbeat dad. If you ditch your family and take off to Florida, you'll be judged, but not nearly as harshly as you would if you attempted to light up a butt in a Starbucks. The antismoking agenda has gotten to the point of absurdity. I feel like if you had a convict lined up to be executed by firing squad in today's society, they'd be fine with the part where we put him in a blindfold and line him up against a wall, but we wouldn't allow him to have that final cigarette. We'd have to stick a Nicorette patch on him with a bull's-eye on it.

Second, I demand that henceforward all life-support equipment will be coin-operated. I'm not talking about a Beverly Hills parking meter where a quarter gets you eight minutes, but a machine that works long enough to prove you have people who care about you. Why are we all pitching in to keep you around if the people who supposedly love you don't give enough of a shit to cough up a couple bucks to keep you hanging on? And is that a world you want to stick around for anyway? If your family can't bring the mason jar that was earmarked for the Coinstar down to the hospital, then there's no reason for you to bother staying on that ventilator. Just let go. It's part of my campaign—You Better
Hope
They Have
Change
.

But back to the government ineptitude. Why would we trust the government to create an insurance system when that same government wrote a tax code that's harder to understand than Bob Dylan reading Dr. Seuss? Has this bureaucratic pig fuck ever proven itself to be efficient or competent?

Talk to your doctor, or any doctor, and ask if they're into Obamacare. They all hate it. It reduces their treatment options; it creates a shit ton of extra paperwork, and cuts their compensation. People go through the eight-plus years of medical school and training because it's supposed to pay off in the end. When you inject the government into that system and reduce the payoff, you're not going to get the best and brightest. The smart people are going to say, “Feh; I'll go be a stockbroker instead.”

Let's face it—a fair amount of this is due to the lawyers. Mentioning lawyers in front of Dr. Drew is like waving a red beach towel in front of a bull. He goes crazy. Doctors have to carry a massive amount of malpractice insurance now because anyone can sue for anything. I'm not saying someone shouldn't sue if a doctor sews up your gaping chest wound with the forceps still in there, but no one is willing to take responsibility for their own health. If you gave yourself diabetes or some other ailment, a doctor better fix you up or you're going to sue him. Why? Because some lawyer told you that you deserve to be compensated for this INJUSTICE and WRONGDOING and
Hey, free money, right?
But it's more like he wants to get compensated when the doctor or hospital just settles to avoid the hassle and bad publicity. No one is taking into account that you're fucking up the life of the guy who tried to save yours or that of your loved one. It's sad. You hear about the inner city and black-on-black crime . . . well, a lawyer suing a doctor is Jew-on-Jew crime.

And when the government gets involved, so do the lobbyists and special interests and advocates for every age, race, and gender, which makes everything a complete disaster. Everyone is fighting for their little fiefdom and no one is looking at the big picture, so you end up with some Frankenstein system assembled by committee that attempts to serve everyone but does the exact opposite.

PUTTING HOSPITALITY BACK IN THE HOSPITAL

I'm not saying there should be zero regulation of the medical field. As I get older, and my parents get older, I've had more interactions with the hospital and thus more shit to complain about, especially when it comes to hospitals.

I want to address the decorum. The hospital is a depressing place. You're only there because something has gone horribly awry (with the rare exception of your old lady getting a nice titty lift). So let's do everything we can to minimize the added depression.

My dad was in the hospital for an extended period in 2012. Long story short, he fell and hit his head but didn't really think anything about it. A week or so later he had some trouble with his hand, and when he talked to his doctor, the doctor suggested a CAT scan. Immediately after that test, it was time for emergency brain surgery; there was hemorrhaging and swelling and it needed to be relieved immediately.

When I got to the hospital and was attempting to find my father's room after the surgery, I was greeted by the old volunteer. This is one of the first things my Secretary of Health and Human Services is going to do away with. I'm there to see my elderly father, who is probably on his way off of this mortal coil. To be greeted by the guy who's two steps behind him is a total bummer. I suspect the old volunteers are there to get acclimated to their new environment.

Plus these guys don't necessarily have that much hustle. I'm attempting to get to my father's room before he croaks and you're guiding me there at a two-step-an-hour pace. Move it, Grandpa.

I also had a run-in with an insulting security guard on a different trip to the hospital. He recognized me and said, “Hey, I loved the
Man Show
. What are you up to nowadays?” Before I got a chance to even begin telling him about my Guinness World Record–breaking podcast, the three network pilots, and the two
New York Times
bestsellers, he jumped in: “Just chillin'? Don't worry, something will come up.” Thanks, dick. Everyone does this now. They ask you a question and answer it for you a second later. Why are you even asking if you already know the insulting answer? My guess, as always? Schadenfreude. This dick probably wasn't feeling too great about the life path that led him to manning the security shack at the hospital, so he's going to take the guy he recognizes as a celebrity and try to knock him down a peg.

A day or two later my father took a turn for the worse: he had a heart attack and had to be resuscitated. At a certain point I got the call from my stepmother saying they called the priest to administer the last rites. You don't need a medical degree to know that's bad. So I headed down to the hospital again, with my friend Ray, who has been like a second son to my dad (why he needed a second son when he barely wanted the first one I'm not sure), to say good-bye. We got into his room and found him hooked up to a thousand hoses and ventilators, including one that drained and dripped various disgusting bodily fluids into a clear plastic container.