That tweet offended many in Britain. It prompted Prime Minister Theresa May's office to issue a statement saying the U.K. premier is "proud" of her country's system
. The U.K. health secretary, Jeremy Hunt,
tweeted back at Trump, saying he may disagree with some of the claims of those attending "Save the NHS" marches, but that "not ONE of them wants to live in a system where 28m people have no cover" — a dig at the
uninsured in America. Hunt wrote that he's proud that Britons "all get care no matter the size of their bank balance."
The National Health Service
spends less than half of what Americans spend per person on health care, and yet life expectancy is higher in Britain.
Defense of the NHS runs straight across the British political spectrum.
"You wouldn't find a single leading politician on either the left wing the Labour Party or the right wing in the Conservative Party that would talk about privatizing the NHS," Murray says. "That would be electoral poison."
The NHS
polls better than the queen. U.K. politician Nigel Lawson once said "the NHS is the closest thing the English people have to a religion."