Stephen saw the NHS as a supreme good ...it’s up to us to fight for it
Hawking’s court battle to stop two-tier health service
My teacher and mentor Stephen Hawking travelled to the US in August 2009 to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his outstanding contributions to science from Barack Obama.
During his visit, Stephen heard that a newspaper, Investor’s Business Daily, had just published an editorial attacking public healthcare systems, claiming: “People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the UK, where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.”
Stephen’s famous sense of humour was tickled by the absurdity of this but he also realised that here was an opportunity to speak out in support of the NHS.
So he did, responding in the press that he would not have survived without the high-quality treatment he got from the NHS.
For me, this story encapsulates what was special about Stephen’s advocacy for the NHS. Stephen’s unique personal history encompassed brilliant scientific creativity, his motor neurone disease and disability and his lifelong experience of being an NHS patient.
And it is this that explains why Stephen’s support for the NHS was passionate and active as well as rational and scientific and why his campaigning was so influential.
My own history with Stephen began in 1987 when I started a PhD under his supervision. The physics Stephen taught me has sustained me in my career as a physicist and, over the years, Stephen also shared with me his thoughts on the NHS as a public service.
He viewed it as a supreme good, binding people to each other, and resulting in social benefits without price.
His life is an example of that. In a very real sense, we owe Stephen’s science and insights into the nature of our universe to the NHS.
Stephen also had personal experience of the trauma of dealing with a health system in which private companies increase their profits by denying care or refusing to cover costs. He told me that during a period working in the US, the health insurance of the university he was working at refused to pay for his care costs when he fell ill. This increased his commitment to the NHS. As the NHS came under greater and greater threat in recent years, Stephen stepped up his advocacy. In August 2017, he gave the keynote address at a Talk NHS conference at the Royal Society of Medicine to an audience of doctors, nurses and students. It was one of the most extraordinary events I’ve ever experienced. He told the story of his life, family, science and his experience of the NHS, presenting these as bound inextricably together. There was laughter, cheering and an emotional standing ovation.
In his talk, Stephen didn’t deny the challenges involved in providing healthcare for a whole nation. But his analysis was that a publicly-provided NHS that is truly comprehensive and guarantees the best possible care to everyone, universally, based only on their need, is the most just and the most economically efficient system.
He condemned the two-tier system that is developing, in which the free, publicly available component of NHS care is not comprehensive but is becoming poorer and increasingly restricted, while those who can afford it pay for better care privately.
Stephen’s analysis was that this is happening because the international healthcare and insurance companies have the power to drive through their privatising agenda.
His diagnosis was that the NHS needs public awareness, because people overwhelmingly oppose privatisation and if they knew what was happening, they would take action against it.
Stephen himself took action by becoming a complainant in a major legal challenge to Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt and NHS England.
Stephen and his co-complainants, Professor Allyson Pollock, Dr Graham Winyard, Prof Sue Richards and Dr Colin Hutchinson, won a judicial review of plans for a major reorganisation of the NHS into 44 so-called Accountable Care Organisations, bite-sized insurance-style systems that can be run for profit by private companies.
The case against Hunt and NHS England is that they have no powers under any existing laws on healthcare to make such sweeping changes and the challenge began yesterday at the High Court.
In January, I visited Stephen in Cambridge and we talked about work he was doing on black holes with colleagues in Cambridge and Harvard. We also talked about the judicial review. He was as clear as ever about the importance of the case. It was the last time I saw him.
The news of Stephen’s death in March was a huge shock. In my eulogy at his funeral I recalled the saying “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice” and said that Stephen had worked to make it so.
NHS campaigner Dr Rachel Clarke told me: “I will never forget Stephen’s extraordinary speech at the RSM. He moved me to tears and renewed my determination never, ever to give up fighting for our irreplaceable NHS.”
I feel the same, and I’ll be there at the Royal Courts of Justice this week to see Stephen’s case heard.
He is no longer with us and it is up to us all now to fight, in his memory, for ourselves, for each other, for our NHS.
We owe Stephen’s science and insights into the nature of our universe to the NHS