Main focus of Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Obama backs down

In the dispute over the healthcare reform US President Barack Obama has backed down from his demand for state health insurance. According to US Secretary of Health Kathleen Sebelius, one alternative could be the creation of insurance cooperatives. Is this back-pedalling or mandatory pragmatism?

Der Standard - Austria

US President Barack Obama's pragmatism on healthcare should facilitate tactical navigation through the maelstrom of congressional politics, but it could also lead him to cede too much ground, writes the daily Der Standard: "An all-or-nothing strategy of the type demanded by Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman would ... certainly fail. The best chance for public health is a comprehensive, step-by-step process of change that will gradually ease Americans' fears of a greater role being played by the state. But if the first step, taken by a popular president, falls flat, the opportunity could be lost altogether. In the coming week Obama has to make sure that at least his core objectives - health insurance protection for everyone and better cost control - are not negotiated away out of sheer pragmatism." (18/08/2009)

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Der Tagesspiegel - Germany

With his willingness to compromise on the healthcare reform US President Barack Obama is demonstrating the necessary pragmatism, the liberal daily Der Tagesspiegel writes: "Gradually the US is turning even that exceptional politician, Barack Obama, into a true American. He, too, will fail to win a majority for the introduction of universal healthcare, even though his approach is cleverer than that of the Clintons 15 years ago. … Obama knows what he can and can't expect of his nation. There will be a healthcare reform but the option that ends up gaining a majority will bear little similarity to what he promised in the election campaign. It has long ceased to be about those who are uninsured. They amount to only 15 percent of the population and 10 percent of the electorate. The priority now is the freedom of choice of the insured. And the way Americans see it that freedom consists among other things in the right to pay too much for comparatively inferior healthcare." (18/08/2009)

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To Ethnos - Greece

Commenting on US President Barack Obama's health reform in the left-wing daily To Ethnos, Nikos Bistis, a member of the national council of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), writes: "It is a measure that will come at a very high ideological cost for the American Right. It clashes with the individualism which is so deeply rooted in American society. … It is a taboo subject which - with the exception of [Bill] Clinton, who was forced to withdraw the bill following a crushing defeat - no other democratic president has dared to touch. The private sector and insurance companies are spending huge sums on negative publicity [against the healthcare reform]. Not a single Republican senator has changed his theses despite Obama's amendments to the bill. On the contrary, many Democrats who depend on the insurance lobby openly demonstrate their inflexibility. Will this be Obama's first major defeat?" (17/08/2009)

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The Daily Telegraph - United Kingdom

The British healthcare system the NHS is often cited as a model in the debate over US healthcare. Yet it must not be immune to criticism at home, writes Philip Johnston in his blog for the conservative newspaper The Daily Telegraph: "What is it about politics in this country that anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxies is howled down? They are traduced and dismissed as barmy, never to be taken seriously, even if there is some good sense to what they say. The latest to be banished to this nether world of eccentrics is MEP Daniel Hannan ... . He dared to question the consensus on the funding and structure of the NHS. After all, what could possibly be wrong with an institution established more than 60 years ago in the aftermath of war and whose delivery has hardly been reformed in the meantime? ... We have a huge self-serving nexus of officials, inspectors and auditors who merely perpetuate a system that is both profligate and inefficient." (17/08/2009)

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