Invoking Stephen Hawking

Every time I think the arguments against health-care reform can't get any crazier, they do. But it'll be hard to top this one, from an Investor's Business Daily editorial, which cites Britain's system, the National Health Service, as a frightening example of what could happen here (found via Liberal Values):

The controlling of medical costs in countries such as Britain through rationing, and the health consequences thereof are legendary.....People such as scientist Stephen Hawking 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.

But Stephen Hawking is British and has lived in Britain his entire life (he is now 67), and continues to received the medical treat-ment necessary to stay alive and working.

Undoubtedly the British system does ration health care to an extent, as every system must and does -- including ours, with its claim denials, its "recission", and its millions of uninsured. But the effort to paint western Europe, Japan, and Canada as hell-holes where "death panels" (wearing black robes and pentagrams, no doubt) cast the elderly and disabled out onto ice floes to die, is unhinged. Too many Americans have been to those places and know better.

Update (12 August): The IBD editorial has been changed to remove the embarrassing error. Hawking speaks out here.