The UK government and NHS workers have jumped to defend the socialized healthcare system after President Trump criticized it, despite it facing its worst crisis in decades and fellow employees protesting that the system is broken.
The NHS is in the middle of the worst crisis in 30 years, and over the weekend, thousands of NHS workers, celebrities, and trades union members marched to demand more cash, despite the service receiving more funding than ever before.
Just last year, a major study found the NHS is among one of the worst health care systems in Europe.
The U.S. president slammed the service in a tweet on Monday, saying the “[universal] system is going broke and not working.”
Hitting back on the social media platform, nurse Natasha White responded: “How DARE you criticise our NHS. I am a Nurse working for this fantastic organisation.
“It’s not perfect, it needs more money but it offers some of the best healthcare in the world to all – no matter how much money you have or have not.”
Protestors carry placards during a march calling for an end to the “crisis” in the state-run National Health Service (NHS), in central London on February 3, 2018. (DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/Getty)
Sami Jo Joyce, another nurse, wrote: “People were protesting about low pay/ and the governments attempts to privatise the nhs! (sic). Universal healthcare helps more than it hinders!”
Rachel Clarke, a palliative care doctor, added: “When we need an opinion from an ignorant, racist, misogynistic, science-denying bigot, you can be sure we call. Until then, kindly keep your vacuous prejudices to yourself. That is all. The NHS.”
The Tweets were picked up by the mainstream media, which jumped to attack President Trump and defend the service.
The NHS is something of a sacred cow in British politics, with any attempts to reign in the enormous spending of the service, or criticism of its inefficiencies very poorly received by many.
The state healthcare provider, which reportedly employs one in 20 of all British workers, has been frequently compared to a national religion in the secular United Kingdom, where the Church of England remains the state religion in name only.
The Health Secretary also waded in, playing down the HNS protests and defending the socialized system.
Asked whether she backed Mr. Hunt’s tweet, a spokesman for the Prime Minister said: “Jeremy Hunt is the health secretary and of course he speaks for the government on these matters.”
At the beginning of January, NHS doctors described “third world conditions” in some hospitals as all non-emergency operations were canceled due to the worst winter NHS crisis in 30 years.
Figures later revealed that 16,893 patients waited more than 30 minutes in ambulances at Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments in the week before New Year’s Eve due to the crisis.
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