Chicken Soup with Obamacare...

I've been accused from time to time of being a liberal. In reality I'm neither liberal nor conservative. When asked, I generally refer to myself as "issue specific." My opinions cover the spectrum from extreme left to extreme right. On the issue of health insurance, I tend to be politically liberal and economically conservative. I underlined the word "insurance" because I keep running into people who are too stupid to know there's a difference between healthcare and health insurance.

At this time there are a relatively fixed number of doctors, nurses, hospitals, ambulances, etc. available to treat patients. These numbers can change, but unlike insurance salesman, it takes a long time to train competent medical personnel, build hospitals, and manufacture all of the supplies and equipment they use. Politicians have chosen to ignore this reality. Instead of proposing a single payer health insurance system that could be introduced gradually as additional healthcare personnel are trained, they've decided to pass a law that simply requires every American citizen to buy health insurance from people who have a vested interest in blocking access to healthcare by denying even the most legitimate claims. Human life clearly has no value to these people and human suffering is someone else's problem. And they've managed to dupe the public with empty rhetoric. The rhetoric they've chosen to use to sell Obamacare to the public is characteristically unimaginative. In fact, the rhetoric of any universal healthcare system is always the same, and always an obvious lie. It usually goes something like this:

Today there are millions of Americans who do not have adequate access to the healthcare they need. If my plan is adopted every American citizen will have access to the healthcare they need. I can't do it without you. I need your vote! TOGETHER WE CAN DO IT!! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!

Politicians seem to take a lot of liberties with the laws of economics. On occasion they stretch the laws of physics as well. They get away with it because the average American who bothers to vote is shockingly stupid. Most of them can't even tell the difference between health care and health insurance.

As I stated above, both medical personnel and the physical plant and equipment they need to treat patients exist in relatively fixed quantities. Suddenly increasing the number of patients by "millions" won't magically precipitate a corresponding increase in the number of doctors, nor will it increase the number of hours in the day those doctors can work. In a capitalist, market driven system, when the number of customers at your door increases beyond what you can comfortably serve, you raise your prices, restrict access, and make sure your wealthiest customers have a key to the back door. In other words...the situation we have today where the quality of health care available to an individual is a direct function of that individual's personal wealth will remain intact. What will change is the amount of money that flows into the health insurance industry. (Those are the people who put you on hold, drag their feet, deny legitimate claims, and hope you die quickly when you really, really need them.)

This is one more example of people in positions of wealth, power, and influence leaving no doubt that human life is cheap, plentiful, and disposable. Not only do they have no intention of increasing access to healthcare to American citizens, but they've come up with a brilliant plan to rip off the ever shrinking middle class even more than they already do.

And that is Chicken Soup for the Terrorist Soul.