Obamacare and the Supremes: So, What Are the French Saying?

 Although French journalists are understandably absorbed by their own presidential election, which has incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy running neck-and-neck against François Hollande of the Socialist Party with far right candidate Marine Le Pen playing the possible spoiler, Judge Scalia's now-famous broccoli defense got the attention of Le Monde reporter Corine Lesnes. Under the headline “Les juges et le broccoli,” Lesnes recounts the recent Supreme Court hearing on the Affordable Care Act from a uniquely Gallic perspective.

Providing some context to her readers, who may not be intimately familiar with US-style rugged individualism, Lesnes writes: “In a country that does not have a [national] law forcing motorcyclists to wear a helmet, the very idea that the federal government could require citizens to buy something is seen as an assault on personal liberty.”

She notes that the hearings did not provide much in the way of clarity. Au contraire, they “brought to the fore the inability of a segment of society to think in terms of mutualité” (i.e., the common good). Republican judges are concerned that young people will be forced to subsidize the healthcare of older citizens, she writes, and this may rob them of a degree of personal freedom. Judge Ginsberg, she notes, was compelled to remind everyone that the principle of mutualité, as evidenced by the Social Security Act, harks back to the 1930s and is hardly a novelty in American life.

She also remarks, with a soupçon of irony, that the contentious Obamacare mandate actually originated with the Heritage Foundation think tank. The mechanism that largely funds healthcare reform and that may be declared unconstitutional was originally a Republican idea, she notes.