To challenge your made-up statistic, I'd bet that isn't even true of Americans if they were offered a choice and a work permit for France.
And that does not seem to be an isolate event : I can read weekly horror stories in Hacker News about health bills in the U.S.
Not trying to trash them or start a flamewar. The French people and government do have a reputation in the Anglo world, probably equally as much as the US does in Europe. The country-side and cities are very nice there no doubt.
I'm not from the US so depending on the relations at the time it might be a different experience. I assume when they were trashed in US media for not joining the Iraq war I there were at least some resentment against US tourists.