"Once I attended the 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 about it to Obama," Erdogan said on Thursday as quoted by the newspaper.
According to Erdogan, he shared Turkey’s experience in healthcare with the US President. The Turkish president remarked that, due to what he termed a "negative reflex" in the United States, Obama "could only solve the problem partly."
Obamacare was signed into law in March 2010, and provides low cost universal healthcare to US citizens through the establishment of online health insurance marketplaces, tax-payer funded subsidies using a vastly simplified logistical system.
Two US government programs implemented through Obamacare, Medicare and Medicaid, provide insurance to an additional 123 million US citizens, according to the White House.
Obamacare has been at the center of a heated dispute between President Obama and some members of the opposition Republican party. The opposition party has vowed to attempt another in a long series of failed motions to repeal the healthcare law following their recent majority win in the House and Senate in November 2014 midterm elections. Republicans claim that the healthcare law, which benefits millions of poor and low-income people in the US, is unconstitutional and a burden on the US economy.
On March 3, US Senator Ted Cruz introduced the Health Care Choice Act to as an alternative to the existing Obamacare program.
