Turkish president: Obamacare was my idea

The president of Turkey says he once counseled President Barack Obama on pursuing healthcare reform in the United States at the behest of American tourists.

“Once I attended the Friday prayer at the Sultanahmet Mosque. 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 health care and wanted me to tell about it to Obama,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at the opening of a health complex on Wednesday in Ankara, according to a report from Hurriyet Daily News.

After hearing from the tourists, Erdogan said, he then spoke with Obama. But “the negative reflex” in the U.S. “made it really hard” for him, so that he “could only solve the problem partly.”

The State Department advises that health care in Turkey’s hospitals “varies greatly.” Large cities like Ankara and Istanbul have modern facilities and equipment, but other communities may still struggle with more advanced medical situations.

The Turkish president says his U.S. counterpart isn’t the only one to have sought out his country’s advice on health care, boasting that European officials have come to study its health care system.

“They try to take us as a model and build similar systems in their country. Don’t we have any deficiencies? We do, but now we are on the right path to success,” Erdogan said.

It’s not the first time Erdogan has praised Obama on health care.

“It’s such a beautiful step and to tell the truth, Mr. Obama should be supported,” he said in October 2013, then in his capacity as prime minister. “There are those who say: ‘You cannot spend my earnings on others.’ Now, how is this possible?”