R i g h t a r d i a: PM Gordon Brown defends NHS from US criticism

(London) Opponents seeking to derail US President Barack Obama's reform plans claim he is bent on a government takeover of private healthcare and some are holding up the National Health Service (NHS) as a warning of what could befall America.

What US conservatives aren't saying is that the UK's NHS is ranked 18th in the world by the World Health organization and the US is only ranked 37th.

An editorial in one newspaper claimed that astrophysicist Stephen Hawking would have never survived if treated here -- before retracting its position when it realised he is British and a big fan of the NHS.

A Republican senator also reportedly remarked recently that US Senator Ted Kennedy might have been refused treatment for his brain tumour on the NHS.

Obama has hit out at "scare tactics" adopted by opponents who brand his plans "socialism". In Britain, leading figures have been quick to defend the NHS as it becomes embroiled in the row.

Brown added his voice Thursday to a campaign on Twitter entitled "We love the NHS".

"The NHS often makes the difference between pain and comfort, despair and hope, life and death. Thanks for always being there," the prime minister said via his Downing Street office's official Twitter account.

His wife Sarah has also added her own message and health secretary Andy Burnham said it was "an institution I will defend to my dying day".

Set up in 1948, the tax-funded NHS has become the largest publicly funded health service in the world. While Britons love to grumble about its flaws, most are fiercely defensive of free-to-access healthcare. The NHS was originally the idea of the conservative PM, Winston Churchill.

But for many people in the United States, who are uninformed, it represents a bureaucratic, costly nightmare because of heath care industry spin and disinformation which has the GOP in their pocket.

An editorial in Investor's Business Daily this week declared: "People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the UK where the National Health Service would say the quality of life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless."

It later admitted this was a "bad example", and the British scientist -- who suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a form of motor neurone disease -- has responded with a firm defence of his treatment.

"I wouldn't be here if it were not for the NHS. I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived," Hawking told the Guardian newspaper earlier this week.

Conservatives for Patient Rights (CPR) is a US lobby group that has paraded disgruntled NHS patients on US television, complaining that there is no money for the latest cancer drugs.

Rush Limbaugh has also used the same 'cherry picking' technique on his radio show. He has used Canadians upset about services they receive to generalize that Canadian health care is inferior to US. The WHO ranks Canada is ranked 30th the world, ahead of the US.

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley was also reported to have attacked the NHS, suggesting that fellow Senator Kennedy may not have been treated in Britain because of his age, which is an outright lie.

The chairman of the British Medical Association, Hamish Meldrum, condemned the statements about the NHS as "jaw-droppingly untruthful", and the health ministry has rejected many of the claims made the other side of the Atlantic.

"The NHS sees one million people every 36 hours and 93 percent of patients rate their care as good or excellent," a spokeswoman said, saying there had been record levels of invesment in recent years.

She also rejected claims the NHS discriminates on age, saying it operated on the basis of clinical need.

"Whether to prescribe drugs or recommend a type of treatment or surgery is, quite rightly, a clinical decision taken on a case by case basis and together with a patient and their family based on all of the available evidence."