UK Health System Hits Back at US Critics

Britain's health care service says it is sick of being lied about.

Pilloried by right-wing critics of President Barack Obama's health care plan, Britain's National Health Service, known here as the NHS, is fighting back.

"People have been saying some untruths in the States," a spokesman for Britain Department of Health said in a telephone interview. "There's been all these ridiculous claims made by the American health lobby about Obama's health care plan ... and they've used the NHS as an example. A lot of it has been untrue."

He spoke anonymously in line with department policy.

A particularly outlandish example of a U.S. editorial, printed in the Investor's Business Daily, claimed that renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, who is disabled, "wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless."

Hawking, who was born and lives in Britain, personally debunked the claim. "I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS," he told The Guardian newspaper. Investor's Business Daily has since corrected the editorial.

As the debate over how best to look after American patients rages on, Britain's socialized health care system has increasingly found itself being drawn into the argument. Critics of the Obama administration's plan to overhaul US health care say the president is seeking to model the U.S. system on that of Britain or Canada — places they paint as countries where patients linger for months on waiting lists and are forbidden from paying for their own medication.

A Republican National Committee ad said that in the U.K. "individuals lose their right to make their own health care choices." Another ad launched earlier this month by the anti-tax group Club for Growth claimed that government bureaucrats in Britain had calculated six months of life to be worth $22,750. "Under their socialized system, if your treatment costs more, you're out of luck," the ad says, as footage of an elderly man weeping at a woman's bedside alternate with clips of the Union Jack and Big Ben.