The Theory Of Everything

Via Yggy, The Guardian's Hugh Muir reminds the world that the UK's National Health Service has magically failed to slaughter millions of Brits, despite the warnings of GOP nutjobs about the Obama health care reform initiative:

The danger, says the Investor's Business Daily, is that he borrows too much from the UK. "The controlling of medical costs in countries such as Britain through rationing, and the health consequences thereof, are legendary. The stories of people dying on a waiting list or being denied altogether read like a horror script … People such as scientist Stephen Hawking 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." We say his life is far from worthless, as they do at Addenbrooke's hospital, Cambridge, where Professor Hawking, who has motor neurone disease, was treated for chest problems in April. As indeed does he. "I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS," he told us. "I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived." Something here is worthless. And it's not him.

The IBD research department needs an overhaul, methinks. Despite the fact that Dr. Hawking is in fact British and grew up in the UK, he somehow slipped through the fingers of the British death panels and went on to become one of the world's foremost theoretical physicists. This would seemingly counter the claim that he "wouldn't have had a chance in the UK."

Go figure. As one of David Kurtz's readers at TPM notes:

Perhaps there will be some brave Republican willing to spearhead an investigation of whether Stephen Hawking actually IS British? Isn't it awfully convenient that a man with no discernable British accent suddenly claims that he is British just after it's pointed out the the UK health system would have euthanized him as a child? Where is his birth certificate?

Doesn't take a world-class scientist to do a little background work, guys.

The best part? IBD's "correction" simply omits the Hawking reference altogether, and still goes on screaming about Britain's death panels coming for your grandmother.