Chicken Soup revisits America's healthcare issue...

I'm repeatedly amazed by the average American voter's inability to distinguish between health insurance and healthcare. Imagine if most of your neighbors, coworkers, and personal acquaintances couldn't tell the difference between automobile insurance and the industry that manufactures automobiles and you'll understand how I feel. I'll try to explain the difference in simple terms. I'll even type slowly for those who can't read so fast.

I want those who manufacture medical equipment and pharmaceutical products to have a profit incentive and a significant number of market competitors so that they'll supply patients with the best that our technology can provide. Capitalism is an asset to patients here.

I want doctors, nurses, and hospitals to have a profit incentive and plenty of competition so that they'll have an ever present reason to do the best job they can do in order to avoid losing their patients (customers) to someone else. Capitalism is an asset here as well.

I do not want the health insurance industry to have a profit incentive and here's why:

1) Health insurance companies are not in the business of healing the sick and injured. They're in the business of making money. Health insurance companies make money by two basic methods. They charge premiums to those who are currently least likely to become sick or injured. Then they save money by refusing to pay legitimate claims as often as they can get away with it. Republicans like this arrangement because people who don't make much money are about as worthy of life as a Jew at a Klan rally. Hitler referred to people who were least likely to produce more than they consumed as "useless eaters." Republicans probably have a similar term, but they're smart enough to avoid using it in front of a camera.

A single payer health insurance system would cover everyone, but it will be economically inefficient because it will cover Americans who are in the Republican moral sphere, not economically worth treating. Republicans don't like the idea of a single payer system because it would allow those unworthy of life to receive healthcare they could never pay for on their own. Republican politicians like to criticize the legality of abortion while they take campaign contributions (bribes) from an industry that forces huge numbers of their fellow Americans to suffer and die needlessly.

And that's all a terrorist needs to know about the value Americans place on the lives of their own citizens.