Britain’s health care service says it is sick of being lied about.
Pilloried by right-wing critics of US President Barack Obama’s health care plan, Britain’s National Health Service, known 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 US editorial, printed in the Investor’s Business Daily, claimed that renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, who is disabled, “wouldn’t have a chance in the UK, 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 US 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 US 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 UK “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 US$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.
The online attacks on Britain’s health care system have been paired with strident criticism from Republican lawmakers.
In an interview widely interpreted as an attack on the UK, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa told a local radio station last week that “countries that have government-run health care” would not have given Senator Edward Kennedy, who suffers from a brain tumor, the same standard of care as in the US because he is too old. Another Republican, Congressman Paul Broun of Georgia, said that the UK and Canada “don’t have the appreciation of life as we do in our society, evidently.”
The criticism, widely covered in the UK media, has clearly stung Britain’s left-leaning Labour government. The Department of Health took the unusual step of contacting The Associated Press and e-mailing it a three-page rebuttal to what it said were misconceptions about the NHS being bandied about in the US media — each one followed with the words: “Not true.”
At the top of the list was the idea that a patient in his late 70s would not be treated for a brain tumor because he was too old — a transparent reference to Grassley’s comments about Kennedy.
And what of Republicans’ claim that British patients are robbed of their medical choices? False again, the department said.
“Everyone who is cared for by the NHS in England has formal rights to make choices about the service that they receive,” it said in its rebuttal.
Then followed a fact sheet comparing selected statistics such as health spending per capita, infant mortality, life expectancy and more. Each one showed England outperforming its trans-Atlantic counterpart.
The British government offers health care for free at the point of need, a service pioneered by Labour in 1948. In the six decades since, its promise of universal medical care, from cradle to grave, is taken for granted by Britons to such an extent that politicians — even fiscal conservatives — are loath to attack it.
But the NHS faces significant challenges, not least a multibillion dollar deficit predicted to open up over the next five years. It has its critics, too, particularly cancer patients who complain that the government refuses to cover costlier drugs, leaving those who need expensive treatments to pay for them out of pocket.
Nevertheless, many in the British press bristled at the criticism from the US right wing.
“How dare the Republicans bad-mouth our free health care system?” Guardian columnist Michele Hanson wrote Wednesday. “If I’d been born in the US, I’d probably be dead by now.”
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was