LONDON - 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."

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.

Waiting lists
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.

The online attacks on Britain's health care system have been paired with strident criticism from Republican lawmakers.

In an interview widely interpreted here as an attack on the U.K., 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 Sen. Edward Kennedy, who suffers from a brain tumor, the same standard of care as in the U.S. because he is too old. Another Republican, Congressman Paul Broun of Georgia, said that the U.K. and Canada "don't have the appreciation of life as we do in our society, evidently."

The criticism, widely covered in the U.K. 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 U.S. 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.

"How dare the Republicans bad-mouth our free health care system?" Guardian columnist Michele Hanson wrote Wednesday. "If I'd been born in the U.S., I'd probably be dead by now."

The only good thing to come to the US out of Britain was the British invasion (music for you youngsters) and a few decent motorcycles. I'm not a "right winger" but I'll politely tell the British officials to fuck off. Fuck off British officals. Next?

They are saying quit lying about us, and then you respond with fuck off.

I just cannot help it, reading that made me think of this:

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“He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.” -Einstein

Just a response to the last paragraph. I am sure the collective IQ of the world would have leaped dramatically if that happy event had in fact occurred.

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Libertas inaestimabilis res est - Liberty is a thing beyond all price. | Sic Semper Tyrannis

Yet for all the failures of the Brit system, it is 18th in the world and the US is 37th.

The US is behind third world countries like Costa Rica and Columbia.

Who the hell rates these countries and why do we believe or give a shit?
The only thing the "government run people" want really is prices to come down.
Thats all I get out of the whole arguement.
Lasic eye surgery, plastic surgery and elective surgerys
the prices don't go up they come down.
Why is that?

Because they are opporating in a more free market
unrestrained by government and insurance regulations.
Untempted by huge pools of public and insurance company funds.

We don't need government to impose 'price controls' or 'ration' care.
We need them to stop trying to help us.
They have done enouph damage already, thank you very much.

Even if this was the best idea ever
people are sick and tired of government spending.
People are sick of government oversteping its constitutional bounderys.
Many people just want to be left alone.

What I've heard is ... if auto accidents and suicides are omitted from the equation, U.S. health care comes out as #1 in the world.

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Liberals are people that will believe anything twice.

British "officials", tell? So I guess we're to assume these "officials" speak for the masses? And that they, the presumed "officials", assume they speak with authority? Sounds just like what we have over here, cross the pond. Lovely...

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Again... not to mention that we are fucking obese. We eat a lot of crap that makes us sick. So many other illnesses come simply from obesity too.

You note that they don't address the waiting lists either... just to say that an old man might get put further down the waiting list or some such nonsense.

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Spot on you called that right.

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Bukkake Bud: It might taste like splooge but shoots smiles all over your face.
When you'll suck on just about anything~think Bukkake.