Stephen Hawking: NHS is Britain's finest public service

The NHS "must be preserved from commercial interests who want to privatise it", Professor Stephen Hawking has warned, in a heartfelt tribute to the health service, recorded to accompany a new documentary about his life.

Professor Hawking, who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at the age of 21, said that he would not be alive today without the NHS, which he described as "Britain's finest public service".

Speaking for a Channel 4 short film to be broadcast on Wednesday, the world-famous physicist and author of A Brief History of Time, recalled his previous public statements about the health service, which came at the height of President Obama's healthcare reforms, when an American newspaper claimed that he would have died already if he were British had to rely on the NHS.

"I replied, 'I am British, and proud of it,'" Professor Hawking said. "Only last summer, I caught pneumonia, and would have died, but for the NHS hospital care. We must retain this critical public service, and prevent the establishment of a two-tier system, with the best medicine for the wealthy, and an inferior service for the rest."

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http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/stephen-hawking-nhs-is-britains-finest-public-service-and-must-be-preserved-from-commercial-interests-8978361.html