There is this feeling that they are the same as us British - perhaps because we speak the same language - but the reality is that we are quite different.
British people believe passionately that everyone is entitled to certain basics such as health care. No-one should suffer because they can't afford medical treatment. We see that as a basic human right.
How could one human being stand by and know that a fellow countryman is suffering because they can't afford treatment.
As a doctor (retired) I could never have refused the best treatment to a patient because they couldn't pay. To me that would have been morally unacceptable.
But in America it seems quite acceptable.
If life has dealt you a tough hand - well that is just too bad.
How do they feel when they read that infant mortality in the US is half as high again as it is in the UK and that it is twice what it is in Sweden?
I suspect they subconsciously think that all those dead infants belong to families of black people and immigrants - not people like them. I hope I do them an injustice.
Our NHS is not perfect by any means but -
In America - taxpayers pay more tax per head on Medicare and Medicaid than the UK taxpayer pays for the whole of the NHS.
Medicare and Medicaid only covers the poor and the elderly. Everyone else has to then also pay for health insurance on top of that.
One does not have to be a genius to see that either far too much money is being spent on health in America or way too little is being spent in the UK.
The realty is both.
and both problems need to be addressed.
Finding a way to pay less on health care would help America's financial problems.
What do the Republicans have against Obamacare - a genuine attempt to improve access to health care and overspend on health.
Don't they see - that their attempts now to block something that has been approved by the democratically elected Government and ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court, is viewed by the world as acting against the very democracy that the USA is meant to stand for?
Is it all because Mr Obama is black
and millions of narrow minded Americans still can't accept that black people are the same as white people?
I do hope I am wrong, but that is how it looks from this side of the pond.
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