Turkey achieved better than Obamacare: Deputy PM

“Obama tried to carry out a health reform, but the draft law didn’t pass Congress. His mother lost her life because she didn’t have money and could not get medical care. Even Mr. Obama, who experienced this deep sorrow, could not pass a health reform … But we have passed a comprehensive health reform. We never created populism [about the issue],” Babacan said in a televised interview on broadcaster 24 TV on May 18.
 
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also recently claimed that he once advised Obama to undertake healthcare reforms in the U.S., following a request by American tourists in Turkey. Erdoğan said his U.S. counterpart “could only solve the issue partly” due to “a negative reflex.”

Speaking in Ankara back on March 18, the Turkish president suggested that other countries were trying to replicate the success of the Turkish model.

“I once attended a Friday prayer at the Sultanahmet Mosque [in Istanbul]. There were tourists. Some of them knew that I would be visiting the United States the following week. They asked me how we could be so successful in healthcare and wanted me to tell Obama about it,” Erdoğan said.

“I then talked about the issue with Mr. Obama. Of course, the negative reflex there [in the U.S.] made it really hard for him,” he added, saying the U.S. president “could only partly solve the problem.”