It's understandable that many people don't want to face the problems revealed by The News Journal's investigation into health care in Delaware's prisons.

Some of the examples found by reporters Lee Williams and Esteban Parra would result in criminal charges had the victims been dogs or horses. But those who suffered were human beings, making the reality so shocking and depraved that some can justify the situation only by relegating the victims to the subhuman status of "criminals."

The thinking behind this position usually hits some combination of three talking points:

•Prison is supposed to be unpleasant, and horrible health care acts as a deterrent.

•If the inmates hadn't committed crimes, they wouldn't be subjected to the vagaries of prison health care.

•Many people who become inmates had no health insurance in the first place, so the care they get in prison isn't any worse than what they would get on the outside.

Yes, such thinking is cold-hearted, but it's also easily refuted.

The deterrence argument is especially weak. If numerous studies have shown capital punishment does not deter murderers, does anyone seriously believe thugs and thieves will hesitate to commit crimes because they won't have access to doctors? Besides, regular health checkups would hardly turn Delaware's overcrowded, understaffed prisons into country clubs.

The idea that all Delaware prisoners are convicted criminals who have earned their punishment is a myth that won't die. At any given time about 20 percent of those in state prisons are there awaiting trial, meaning they haven't been convicted yet. Should an acute medical crisis befall them, they will receive no better care than the guilty.

Finally, the idea that people without health insurance receive no health care reveals a common misconception about how the American system works.

The United States already has socialized medicine -- we don't call it that because it would upset too many people. People without insurance and no ability to pay their hospital bills still receive treatment by showing up at emergency rooms. They aren't turned away; the cost of their care is simply spread among the patients who can pay, or who have insurance companies that will pay.

It's certainly true that people without health insurance are less likely to receive proper medical care. But it's absurd to suggest that those with serious conditions wouldn't seek treatment.

Consider Anthony Pierce, the now-infamous "brother with two heads," whose malignant tumor killed him after more than a year without proper treatment. On the outside, he could have gone to an emergency room, where doctors would have diagnosed him properly and removed the growth before it invaded his brain. That wouldn't have guaranteed his survival, but it's a far cry from the "care" he received from the for-profit health-care provider hired by the state.

Still, this third argument approaches an unpleasant truth -- we dare not make health care for prisoners better than it is for the uninsured, for fear of giving poor people another motive for committing crimes.

Given that reality, we should at least amend our truth in sentencing laws and tell convicts that whatever the length of their incarceration, a medical mishap could cost them their lives.