It was always obvious that the death of Stephen Hawking would be used to tell us how much better the NHS used to be. Because, you know, there are people out there who will tell us that the Sun rising in the east is proof of how much better the NHS used to be.
But kudos to Zoe Williams who manages to do this without quite grasping reality.
Instead, the question we should be asking in homage to this extraordinary man is what life would be like today for a 22-year-old, recently arriving at Cambridge for graduate studies, diagnosed with motor neurone disease.
Hmm, OK.
He would still need a wheelchair, another postcode lottery: across the UK, a quarter of people referred to wheelchair services by a GP get no equipment at all. In some areas, three-quarters are offered nothing, and have a choice between crowdfunding their equipment and being bed-bound.
The thing being, Hawking was rather famous for insisting that, until absolutely and completely necessary, he refused to use a wheelchair:
Hawking was fiercely independent and unwilling to accept help or make concessions for his disabilities. He preferred to be regarded as “a scientist first, popular science writer second, and, in all the ways that matter, a normal human being with the same desires, drives, dreams, and ambitions as the next person.”[254] His wife, Jane Hawking, later noted: “Some people would call it determination, some obstinacy. I’ve called it both at one time or another.”[255] He required much persuasion to accept the use of a wheelchair at the end of the 1960s,[256] but ultimately became notorious for the wildness of his wheelchair driving.
He started using a wheelchair some 3 or 4 years after gaining his PhD that is.
No, there is more:
During a visit to CERN on the border of France and Switzerland in mid-1985, Hawking contracted pneumonia, which in his condition was life-threatening; he was so ill that Jane was asked if life support should be terminated. She refused, but the consequence was a tracheotomy, which would require round-the-clock nursing care and remove what remained of his speech.[264][265] The National Health Service was ready to pay for a nursing home, but Jane was determined that he would live at home. The cost of the care was funded by an American foundation.[266][267] Nurses were hired for the three shifts required to provide the round-the-clock support he required.
It wasn’t that pre-austerity NHS which paid for his care either. Nor his computer voice:
Hawking, of course, needed more than a wheelchair; able to communicate using only the muscles of one cheek, he used a speech-generation device, which it is impossible to imagine as routine provision from a system with so little interest in what disabled people have to say.
Many of the things which Zoe is lauding the NHS for providing weren’t in fact provided by the NHS. Bit of a hole in the argument, isn’t it?
I assume the the quarter of people who get referred by the (generalist) GPs to have an assessment by the specialists are told the answer is no (at this time). Sounds to me that the system is probably working reasonably well, GPs guess right 75% of the time but are still passing borderline cases acroos to the specialists to make an expert decision. If 100% of people referred were given a wheelchair then I’d be very worried – either the GPs are restricting the assessments or they would be being handed out too easily
Of course she is missing the trend as well – these days the NHS is edging towards recommending euthanasia. And it is good that his wife did not agree to his machine being turned off. I am sure the NHS put pressure on.
Williams again trots out the classic leftie false choice that, if government did not “provide” health care, no one would do it.
Its always worth asking a lefty when the NHS built its first hospital just to see the look of confusion when you tell them it was 1960s and not 1948.
NHS HQ should be transferred to Mecca so that our leftie friends only have to remember the one direction in which to bow.
Be fair to the silly girl, she was presumably misled by some of the guff that Hawking himself propounded about the NHS.
Hawking is another example that intelligence does not equate with common sense or wisdom. See also Joshua Silver.