Doctor Obama

For the French, who have been used to social security for decades, the debate raging in the United States on healthcare reform, initiated by U.S. President Barack Obama, is simply surreal. The reform appears necessary.

In fact, the current system excludes 46 million Americans from health insurance (or one out of six people) who cannot pay for private health insurance or who do not have access to public health insurance (Medicare and Medicaid), which is reserved for senior citizens and the poorest citizens. Furthermore, it is the most expensive in the world, since it absorbs the equivalent of 18 percent of the USA’s GDP (opposed to 11 percent in France, which is regarded as very expensive).

Obama’s reform aims to expand Medicare coverage by subsidizing the poor and by introducing a public insurer to compete with private insurers, as well as prohibiting them from denying “at risk” customers. It seems prudent and is common sense, yet it has started a fierce political battle and is increasingly embarrassing for the White House.

Obviously, the Republicans are against it, just like they were in 1993 with Bill Clinton’s similar reform. Mobilizing the most conservative networks and medias, lobbyists of the powerful private sector are fueling the doubts of the Democratic minority camp, and they are not afraid of demagoguery. For example, Sarah Palin, the former Republican candidate for vice president, accused Barack Obama of wanting to “nationalize the healthcare system” and establishing “death courts” where “bureaucrats” would decide who has the right to be treated. She concluded, briefly: “Such a system would be the incarnation of evil.”

But the most shocking and revealing thing is that these extravagant arguments, which appear ridiculous and trivial, are increasingly being listened to by middle-class America and may seriously threaten the adoption of the project.

It triggers again the intimate and violent springs of American society: the total rejection of “socialism,” the absolute (blind) defense of individual freedom against any form of collective responsibility for the poor, at the risk of an ultra-liberal destruction.

For Barack Obama, it is seven months after his inauguration at the White House and for the hope that he will revitalize change in America, this test is crucial. Hopefully it does not result in failure.