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Originally Posted by MovingForward
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Funny, I heard he went in for a check-up and......
Actually, the doctors in Brittan diagnosed him with Lou Gehrig's disease in 1963 concluding that he wouldn't live long enough to complete his doctorate. It was only later in 1982 when he developed pneumonia in Switzerland that he first faced the realities of rationed government care.
I was in Geneva, at CERN, the big particle accelerator, in the summer of 1985
. ... I caught pneumonia and was rushed to hospital. The hospital in Geneva suggested to my wife that it was not worth keeping the life support machine on. But she was having none of that. I was flown back to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, where a surgeon called Roger Grey carried out a tracheotomy. That operation saved my life but took away my voice.
http://turnbull.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk...s/Hawking.html
They sound to me like the gang that couldn't shoot strait. First they tell him he wouldn't live to finish his doctorate, then they destroy his vocal cords during a routine tracheotomy. Now he has to talk with a cancer-kazoo for the rest of his life. He should get a good lawyer and sue everyone involved. Oh, wait a minute, he can't because it's the flippin' government.
I wonder if he were Steven Hawking the auto mechanic instead of Steven Hawking the physicist would he get the same treatment from the British health care system. You know auto mechanics generally don't make headlines when they die "in hospital". Doubt their would be a big investigation of Steven Hawking the tranny tech who had Lou Gehrig's disease dying from pneumonia. No, regular working stiffs would have never come back from Switzerland alive. They would come back in the baggage compartment.
Well, we seem to have proven that if you have some money in the bank and you are famous, you can circumvent the death panels (Switzerland's in this case) to get health care elsewhere.