As the news spread that the U.S. Supreme Court had upheld the law and its requirement that most people buy health insurance, some people across Europe took to Twitter to ask: What’s the big deal?

“Dear Americans. Health insurance is very important for your health and life. Don’t forget. We have it in Germany,” one Twitter user from Germany wrote, adding a smiley face to the end.

Rafael Dohms, a computer engineer living in the Netherlands, wrote, “I’m forced to pay health insurance here in the [Netherlands] … not as bad as I would have imagined.”

And Parisian filmmaker Vincent Galiano joked, “At least USA becomes a modern nation! Soon even the education could be good!”

In Europe, where governments take a bigger role in healthcare, many people have been baffled by the political furor over the healthcare law championed by President Obama, which has spawned fervent protests and angry accusations that the government is sliding into socialism. The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the government may impose tax penalties on people who don't buy insurance, something that opponents argued was an unconstitutionally intrusive step.

“Why object [to] Obamacare?” a French teacher mused online Thursday in Switzerland, where residents must buy insurance in a system similar to the contested American law. “Is it more about *having* to get insurance, or more about poor people getting treated for less?”