The right wing opponents to Obama’s public health care proposals in the US are now going into hysterical hyperdrive with allegations about the NHS that are totally wrong and a total fiction.

I for one would not be here today if we didn’t have the NHS - OR if I lived in the US – the NHS saved my life and I find it both distateful and upsetting to read the slanderous, insulting comments that are being misrepresented in the US media.

For instance: 

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.

One 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.”

I am pleased to hear that the Department of Health has now launched a campaign to correct the lies being reported, I believe the Government should also make the strongest representations possible.

What is happening is insulting to all those that have relied on the NHS  and to all those dedicated and highly committed health practitioners that work in the NHS. These right wing comments are nothing short of a disgrace and an insult to the UK.

We love our NHS  – Hands off!