Why did your best friend drop out of college to get health insurance? Why didn't he/she just sign up for the college's health insurance plan which is available to all students?

I guess we should be in favor of socialized medicine since your friend had to give up the opportunity for college in order to get health care under our system.

Nice try.

Could it perhaps be that he/she wasn't satisified with the college's health insurance plan where you have to wait for non-emergency visits and wanted the choices provided by private insurance.

What "choices provided by private insurance"? Because insurance is linked to employment (or, perhaps, college enrollment), and is essentially unaffordable to anyone who is not in a covered group, the vast majority of privately insured individuals have essentially no "choice." You take the insurance your employer offers. If you work for a state government or large corporation, you might be able to choose from a few different private insurance companies; most others have to take whatever carrier their employer picks. This notion that we all have "choice" is a delusion encouraged by insurance companies themselves. Members of a college's group plan have neither more nor less "choice" than members of an employer's group plan.

These buzzwords like "choice" and "rationing" have been co-opted by the health insurance companies and healthcare conglomerates and have been so distorted as to become meaningless.

To add on to this thought, as a college student, your "choice" is to pay out of pocket to be covered by your school's plan.

A working person, however, has a stream of income, and typically insurance costs are deducted from that stream before a paycheck is received.

What stream of income does a typical full-time college student have? Where I went to school, I wasn't salaried. Maybe I picked the wrong school, or maybe your premise is just ridiculous.