Barack Obama Becomes an American

As was the case with Clinton, President Obama is also not finding majority support for universal healthcare. Freedom is more important in the United States.

The United States is gradually making even Barack Obama, this exceptional politician, into a real American. He, too, will not get the necessary support for the introduction of universal healthcare, although he is attempting to do it more shrewdly than Clinton did 15 years ago.

As for the fundamental ideological differences between Europe and America, the question goes to which freedoms and risks a society cedes to the individual person and when those persons supporting that society should become engaged. Furthermore, Americans and Europeans have almost opposite views on the role of government. Americans tend to consider it to be a curse. It is an unfortunate necessity for defending their way of life from enemies, as well as for a few organizational roles, but otherwise it should keep its nose out of their lives. Europeans concede parental roles to the government, from social security to environmental and climate protection. This kind of view arouses anger in most Americans.

Arguments and empirical examples count for little in this debate. Americans’ mistrust of government is refreshing on many fronts, not only in healthcare policy. The insurance coverage of the average American citizen against illness and its consequences is inferior to that in Germany, and yet the American definitely has to pay more for it. But many Americans see this debate on healthcare reform as a question of freedom. The government does not have to dictate to them whether they should or should not be insured. This is incomprehensible for most Europeans.

Obama is backing down now. He is giving up on government paid medical insurance for millions of uninsured people, for whom the premiums are too high or who have been turned down by private insurers because of pre-existing conditions. And before this, Obama tacitly abandoned another campaign promise to have compulsory insurance for everyone.

The opposition is a mixture of citizens who are truly fed up with, as they see it, the nanny state, and business groups who are making a lot of money under the existing system. They abuse America’s founding myth, that it was created as the “land of the free” in contrast to the European monarchies, for their own interests. Opponents of reform go so far as to invoke Thomas Jefferson, who said “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

Obama understands what he can and cannot ask of his country. There will probably be some sort of healthcare reform. But whatever has support in the end will have little to do with what he promised during the campaign. For a long time, it was a question of the uninsured. They make up only 15 percent of all Americans and only 10 percent of voters. Now, freedom of choice for the insured is taking priority. As to freedom and how Americans understand it, this freedom also applies to paying too much for comparably inferior healthcare.