{"id":890,"date":"2009-09-09T13:26:42","date_gmt":"2009-09-09T17:26:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=890"},"modified":"2009-09-09T13:26:42","modified_gmt":"2009-09-09T17:26:42","slug":"an-example-of-the-polarizing-nature-of-the-health-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2009\/09\/09\/an-example-of-the-polarizing-nature-of-the-health-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"An example of the polarizing nature of the health debate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is a classic polarizing topic for debate . . . so much so that very little information is exchanged between the sides because they&#8217;ve already made their minds up and facts are not going to change anything. I&#8217;m not over-fond of Canada&#8217;s healthcare system: my dealings with it have been quite uneven, but generally not good experiences. That aside, there are positive things about the system along with the negative.<\/p>\n<p>The American debate is well past the point of rationality. As an example, the other day I read an announcement that a well-known person was struggling with cancer and that the prognosis was not good (and I&#8217;m deliberately not linking to the discussion in question). The responses on that particular page split fairly evenly into three groups:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>People who expressed their sympathy and hopes for her recovery.<\/li>\n<li>People who pounced on her illness as a reason for implementing Obama&#8217;s healthcare proposals <em>right now<\/em>. <\/li>\n<li>People who used her illness as a way to decry socialized medicine in all its forms.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Comments from group two failed to notice that the family lives in Canada. Comments from group three failed to notice that this was a human being in pain, facing an even more painful future. Neither group covered themselves with glory.<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t even say I was surprised. Disgusted, but not surprised.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a classic polarizing topic for debate . . . so much so that very little information is exchanged between the sides because they&#8217;ve already made their minds up and facts are not going to change anything. I&#8217;m not over-fond of Canada&#8217;s healthcare system: my dealings with it have been quite uneven, but generally [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,13],"tags":[162],"class_list":["post-890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-usa","tag-socializedmedicine"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-em","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=890"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":892,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890\/revisions\/892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}