{"id":4138,"date":"2013-09-25T19:11:25","date_gmt":"2013-09-26T00:11:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=4138"},"modified":"2013-09-25T19:11:25","modified_gmt":"2013-09-26T00:11:25","slug":"how-aboot-those-crazy-americans-eh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=4138","title":{"rendered":"How Aboot Those Crazy Americans, Eh?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While Ted Cruz and his fellow conservatives mount yet another doomed effort to derail Obamacare, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/matt-miller-canadians-dont-understand-ted-cruzs-health-care-battle\/2013\/09\/25\/ee2d6e6e-25d9-11e3-b75d-5b7f66349852_story.html\">Canadians are pointing at us and snickering<\/a>. Even the super-wealthy Canadians can\u2019t understand why a relatively modest set of reforms provokes such conniptions among American Tea Party types. Compared to the single-payer systems found in Canada and much of Europe, Obamacare preserves the status quo to an almost embarrassing degree.<\/p>\n<p>The Affordable Care Act has plenty of flaws and shortcomings that should be addressed. It&#8217;s too bad that Republicans can&#8217;t engage in a reasonable discussion about how to improve the law, but the Tea Party has rendered the opposition incapable of discussing policy. Their willingness to shut down the government and risk a debt default in order to deny people health insurance isn&#8217;t just conservatism run amok. It&#8217;s a deeply reactionary response to a rapidly changing world, mixed in with some not-so-subtle racism for good measure. I&#8217;m not sure how you persuade people with that mindset to accept reality. And that&#8217;s why I&#8217;m more than a bit worried about what the next few weeks will bring.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While Ted Cruz and his fellow conservatives mount yet another doomed effort to derail Obamacare, Canadians are pointing at us and snickering. Even the super-wealthy Canadians can\u2019t understand why a relatively modest set of reforms provokes such conniptions among American Tea Party types. Compared to the single-payer systems found in Canada and much of Europe, <a href='https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=4138' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","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":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[25,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-care","category-wonkery","category-25-id","category-15-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-14K","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4138"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4139,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4138\/revisions\/4139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}