{"id":306,"date":"2010-03-23T08:38:03","date_gmt":"2010-03-23T16:38:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/onelife\/?p=306"},"modified":"2010-03-23T08:38:03","modified_gmt":"2010-03-23T16:38:03","slug":"health-care-or-semantics-or-should-i-say-wellness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/?p=306","title":{"rendered":"Health care or semantics? Or should I say “wellness?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whichever phrase I use, I will try to say it politely. Have you noticed there isn\u2019t much flaming on Facebook? Enemies, or the merely tedious, are eliminated much the way the feeble are culled from a herd of wildebeest. The annoying and the toxic as well, get Blocked<\/em>. Booted off, or out. It seems honest opinions are what you scroll through, consort with. How civilized.<\/p>\n

The hot topic today is the historic passage of the US health care reform bill. Many fellow Canadians can\u2019t understand why Americans\u2014the majority of Americans according to the Republican party\u2014wouldn\u2019t want universal health care. I was an expatriate residing in the U.S. for many years, understand it and Americans better but still don’t get it<\/em> either. Is it Canadian or Utopian<\/em> to expect a civilized, affluent society to be ready, willing and able to care for its sick and, or elderly? Are we not human? Or are we wildebeest?<\/p>\n

Born of revolution, many Americans possess a streak of individualism that borders on libertarianism, self-determination to the point of Darwinism, where only the middle class survive and the rich thrive. The United States has instituted Social Security and Medicare and pride themselves on providing their military with only the best health care. Why is it so difficult to ratchet it up another notch and provide insurance to the estimated 32 million other Americans without coverage? Because that constitutes socialism<\/em>! Unlike Canadians, who\u2014rightly or wrongly, strongly or weakly\u2014depend on their governments to provide not only health care but infrastructure, education and a guaranteed income, many Americans equate universal health care with socialism<\/em>, which equates with communism<\/em> so many years after the Cold War. Perhaps it all comes down to semantics.<\/p>\n

Oh and apparently the University of Ottawa, and most Canadians, according to its Vice-President\u00a0 Francois Houle<\/a> don\u2019t want to hear American and professional talking head Ann Coulter\u2019s opinion unless she\u2019s not only honest, but also polite. He sent her a message basically warning her to watch her mouth. Bad move, which only backfired. Why recognize such a hate-mongering pundit<\/em> for now she’s threatening to sue-milk it for all it’s worth-but of\u00a0 course that\u2019s a whole other can o\u2019 worms, or rather, words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whichever phrase I use, I will try to say it politely. Have you noticed there isn\u2019t much flaming on Facebook? Enemies, or the merely tedious, are eliminated much the way the feeble are culled from a herd of wildebeest. The annoying and the toxic as well, get Blocked. Booted off, or out. It seems honest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[149,152],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}