Spiegel Online reports today on the health-care debate in the United States. German “media commentators” across the board appear to be a little unclear on the concept:

German media commentators say Obama has lost his near-messianic status in the course of the health-care debate. Many Europeans, they say, can’t understand why so many Americans are clinging on to a health-care system that is less efficient, and provides worse care for average citizens, than European systems.

The Center-Left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

The 44th president, once revered as a messiah, is shrinking back to human proportions. This normalization, which is healthy, has been caused by the row over how to improve America’s health-care system. Obama has given up core elements of his most important reform plan in the face of sometimes aggressive, even fired-up protests from a right-wing mob. . . .

The Left-leaning Die Tageszeitung writes:

The entire reform debate suffers from the problematic conviction that has never been questioned, namely that health is an asset from which it’s OK to make money. A public health insurance system that doesn’t need to make money will end up ruining the private companies in the sector—that’s the argument the opponents of the reform are seriously making. . . .

The Center-Left Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel writes:

The resistance comes from citizens who are genuinely outraged at what they see as state interference and business groups that are earning good money from the existing system. They are abusing the founding myth for their own purposes. The US was created as a “land of the free” against the dictatorship of monarchies in Europe. Opponents of the reform are going so far as to cite Thomas Jefferson: The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

At least the German media commentators did not denigrate as well-dressed Nazis those Americans who showed up at town halls to talk to their representatives.

In other news today, Speigel Online reports that the German health minister is in political trouble for repeatedly flying to Spain for vacations and having her chauffeur drive her official limousine there:

German Health Minister Ulla Schmidt has come under pressure again over her use of an official limousine while on vacation after she admitted having done so not just this year, but on several occasions since 2004.

The Health Ministry told the German parliament’s budget committee that Schmidt had the limousine driven from Germany to her holiday location in Spain and back in the years 2006 through 2008.

In Europe, they gave up clinging to guns, religion, and a private health-care system a long time ago. Hardworking government ministers now provide many things in which the private sector used to be involved. Difficult to understand why anyone would want it any other way.