MEDIA REACTION: PRESIDENT OBAMA'S HEALTH CARE PLANS

UNCLAS KATHMANDU 000861



STATE FOR SCA/INSB, PM/CBM, PM/PRO



STATE FOR SCA/PPD, PA/RRU



SIPDIS



E.O. 12958 N/A

TAGS: KMDR, KPAO, PGOV, OPRC, NP

SUBJ: MEDIA REACTION: PRESIDENT OBAMA'S HEALTH CARE

PLANS



1. An opinion piece in popular English daily "The

Kathmandu Post," September 17, 2009 called President

Barack Obama's healthcare plan inspired by socialist

policies. The piece drew comparisons between United

States and Nepal, where being labeled a 'socialist'

is a badge of honor and for an American politician

would be "a death nail on his political career."

The article recommends study of the U.S. healthcare

system in order to address the needs of the poorest

of the poor.



2. Excerpts: "The ongoing healthcare reform debate

in the U.S. has reignited the partisan flames that

heated up the years of Bush presidency-just the kind

of fires that Barack Obama pledged to douse if he

was elected the president. ...In this acrimonious

debate, Obama has variously been called a 'racist,'

a 'Muslim' and even a 'Communist. ...Imagine a

Nepali prime minister being heckled in the

Constituent Assembly as a socialist. It is likely

that the person would accept the title with relish."



3. "...Obama, of course, cannot declare his

socialist inclinations. In America, that would be a

death nail on his political career. But it's an

open secret that the impetus for many of his

policies come from Social Democrats in Western

Europe: broadening of public option for healthcare

insurance, embrace of internationalism, greater

government oversight over private banks and

financial institutions, government control of

private enterprise, to name a few. Let us call a

spade a spade: These are all socialist policies.

What's hard to understand is the anathema that word

socialism evokes in America, especially among the

republicans. It seems they are still spooked by the

spectre of former Soviet Union which considered

socialism a stopover en route to establishing a

communist utopia. The rest of the world believes

that brand of socialism stopped being a global

forces after the fall of the Berlin Wall: many

Americans remain unconvinced."



4. "The US and the nuclear West argue that their

nuclear weapons guarantee world peace, while any

such weapons possessed by "rogue" states would

threaten that peace. True, developed countries and

mature democracies are less likely to resort to WMD

compared to unstable countries like Pakistan or

Iran, but to say that developed countries never use

them runs against historical fact: Didn't the US

drop A-bombs on Japan during World War II?"



5. "At present the U.S. government covers just 45.4

percent of health costs of Americans-one of the

worst rates in the industrialized world. ...In

opposing Obama's healthcare plan, many Republicans

are playing with the lives of their brethren to

appease their donors and vote bank."



6. "Death of hundreds of people for the lack of

basic medicine like and a little common sense is

just not done. If the developed countries continue

to food most of the healthcare bills of their

citizens, it is because health and education are the

fundamental basis for a developed society. Like in

any other field, the private players can work in

concert with the government in the health sector.

What they cannot do is play the government's role in

providing poor people with social safety nets

without any eye on profits. Obama's healthcare

proposal chiefly aimed at incorporating the poorest

of the poor Americans into the U.S. healthcare

system deserves to be studied in detail while

designing the healthcare system for federal Nepal."



MOON