A Healthy Debate?

It's been clear for a while now that US President Barack Obama isn't going to have it all his own way. In particular, his attempts to reform the United States' healthcare system appear to be in intensive care, with his latest compromise proposals achieving the unenviable feat of irritating liberals while leaving his conservative critics unmoved.

While much of the concern centres around the potentially astronomical costs of extending coverage to the millions of Americans currently without health insurance, anything that smacks of 'socialising' the healthcare system seems guaranteed to raise the ire of a significant section of the American general public.

It's a reminder of how different the US mindset is in many respects from the rest of the developed world, whether we're talking about the role of religion in public life, its attitude towards climate change, or taxation. The furore caused in the UK last week by the American right's demonisation of the UK's publicly-funded health service illustrated that - bar the occasional heretic like MEP Daniel Hannan - Europeans are much more comfortable with the state playing a high-profile and overtly redistributive role in their lives. They may whinge about it, but belief in the NHS is a lot more fervent than belief in God in Britain these days.

But if Americans aren't sold on 'socialised medicine', they clearly perceive the need for reform of some kind. Every couple of years, GlobeScan asks the general public in over 20 countries to name the most important issue facing their nation. Our latest data, just out of field, shows that Americans are by some distance the most likely of any country surveyed to mention health care costs - in fact, it's the second most mentioned issue. So maybe Obama is right to persist.

What's the top issue preoccupying Americans then, you ask? With apologies to Bill Clinton, it's the economy, stupid. As it is everywhere else. Maybe Americans aren't so different from the rest of the world after all.