"I'm not as egalitarian as the French. I would rather leave the government out of health-care and just get the cost down with Tort reform."
Yes, I think that this is a core difference.
At heart, France is a very Catholic country, and by way of that more communitarian than Protestant America is. I think that there is a key psychological component that cannot be gotten past easily, but I don't think that the difference is really political but moralistic.
Two other examples that come to mind is the heavier French protection of family, and the intense focus on privacy as a fundamental human right. These are persistent cultural traits which translate into law, but are not really political "choices" as such. They're just "there".
The French could not have a health care system that did not treat everyone, or in which people could not get more or less the same access to care. It would be one of the things too fundamental to the core of what French people think is right and wrong. They can't do the economic analysis on it because the emotion of good and bad overcomes it.
Another example would be the Kelo decision in America. Taking houses to give land to private developers would risk provoking a revolt in France. The French is much more bound to his piece of earth and less transient than the American is. Kelo was offensive enough in America. It's just unthinkable in France.
I don't think Americans are so much torn as to what to do as divided ethnically into different strains that carry with them these conflicting impulses. I would suspect that if on teased out the Catholic strain in America it would be much keener on universal health care than the Protestant, regardless of how the income distribution curve worked out.
I suspect you are correct. My Dad taught me that taking a handout was the greatest sin, welfare especially. Government taking from me to give to someone else or my accepting something from the government is to horrible to contemplate.