Ouch!

Boy! I really touched a nerve with my last post. More than a nerve, actually. Some of the comments were downright nasty and the station decided they constituted abuse, so they’re gone.

It’s really disappointing to me and indicative of how fractured we’ve become. I put a lot of blame on us, the media. Most talk radio shows and cable news shows thrive on opinions, the more loudly expressed and passionately held, the better. What happened to a respectful conversation among intelligent, well informed people where we might actually learn something?

I take my positions on issues based on the facts as I know them. After all my years in the news biz, I am also very skeptical. I said in a previous post that I really appreciate citations when you tell me I’m wrong. So, let’s try an experiment.

The comment on my last post from “One Wonders” suggested I move to Canada “and see how great their health care system is” and “just ignore all the people who come from Canada’s socialized healthcare to ours so their life can be saved.” Are there any sources we can cite to support One Wonders contention? Are there any that debunk the claim? In fact, there are both.

I want you to put this phrase into your search engine: “Canadians coming to U S for healthcare.” I used Google, so if you want to duplicate my results, that’s what you should use.

The first site Google returns looks pretty good for One Wonders’ position. It’s The Daily Caller, which cites a report with the headline, “Thousands fled Canada for health care in 2011.” I wasn’t familiar with the site, so I checked it out. It was founded by Tucker Carlson and a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney. I also saw that the article cites a number — 46,159 Canadians coming south for health care. I looked up the population of Canada (34,880,000) and did the math. That means .0013 percent of Canadians got health care in the U.S. in 2011.

I moved down the list of Google returns. Next is an article on the Denver Post’s website. Not good for One Wonders’ position. Next is the Wikipedia page on Canada’s system. Under the section “Canadians visiting the U.S. to receive health care” there’s also not much support for One Wonders’ comment.

The fourth Google return is the AARP website, not a post One Wonders would want to cite.

I didn’t find another return that supported One Wonders until I got down to number 7, a blog post on the Heritage Foundation website.

I’m not going to recap the arguments for and against One Wonders assertion because I don’t want you to get them from me. Read the articles, follow the links to the studies cited, check out the background of the people and sites if you think they might have an agenda, and then let me know what you think down in the “Comments” section. And please, no SHOUTING, no foul language and no personal attacks. Our experiment will be to see if we can have a civil discussion.