Even though we get most of the "big" news online, we still buy our daily newspaper "L'Independant" every morning to keep up with what's happening locally. Often, we find the local interest stories charming more than earth shattering, but it's always good to keep up on current events.
Now, after years of reading the "L.A. Times," the "Independant" can seem quaint, so imagine my surprise on reading this morning's editorial entitled "Mensonges," or "Lies."
What lies were they talking about, I wondered. Well, the lies of the American anti-healthcare reformers!
If you want to read it in it's original French, you can go here to L'Independant, otherwise I've taken the liberty of providing a translated version:
For Barack Obama, the difficulties are beginning after several months of a state of grace. And the "mother of all reforms" for the golden boy of the American dream will be the health system.
The U.S. president, in fact, did not see the blow coming, it was launched on the internet by Sarah Palin, the running mate of former candidate John McCain. It asserted that Obama's reforms would result in a "death panel" that decided whether those who, at the end of life or suffering from major handicaps, should survive or not. The caricature is obviously enormous, and far from the reality of a reform that appears shy to Europe:
primarily to create a public and compulsory insurance that would require private insurers to lower their permiums.
But the opposition, born in the heart of the summer, has created a controversy that is a total fantasy but which resonates in the public opinion: the image of a "Brave New World" bureaucracy to decide on the health of Americans.
What is really frightening in this case, is the enormous effectiveness of a campaign of denigration. Some did not hesitate, for example, to compare these "death panels" to Hitler's final solution, and belief in the need to reform the health system has slowly eroded in public opinion.
Just like in a Hollywood film without subtlety,the "good" Barack Obama will have to triumph over the "bad guys" and their deceit. Behind the excesses and simplistic platitudes, of course, hides the less admissible truth: the idea that social success, including health and therefore life expectancy, is not shared. This inequality is also about the inequality of race, which is something natural in the United States,
Watching this discussion from France is certainly enlightening. The difficulty that the United States has in building a more egalitarian health system - Clinton already failed in a first attempt in 1997 - permits us to measure the value of "Secu" (Social Security); an idea born post-war and from the resistance. Noble ideas but also effective. Because the U.S. system, in addition to being unjust, is expensive. It excludes 46 million people while the country spends 16% of its GDP on health compared to 11% in France. We do not know how lucky we are.
More truth in this small daily than in all the vast pages of the American press.