[digg-reddit-me]The rabidly right-wing yet still influential Investors Business Daily opines against health care reform saying:

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.

Of course, Stephen Hawking is and always has been British – having lived and worked and been taken care of by this system.

All this is to say nothing of the various other canards raised – namely that any of the current plans being debated bear any resemblance to the British single-payer and entirely government-run system.

The editorial also explains:

The British have succeeded in putting a price tag on human life, as we are about to.

Matt Yglesias nicely parries this point:

[A]s with all anti-rationing talk you really have to wonder what rightwingers think happens in a free market system. In a pure market, your life is worth what you’re able to pay. The way the free market works, if an indigent woman gives birth to a premature infant you let the infant die. Thankfully, no country—not even the US of A—is actually sufficiently committed to free market principles to let infants die like that.

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