With US healthcare debate heating up during Congress's summer recess, criticisms about UK healthcare system has been directed across the Atlantic by some of the anti-reform campaigners.

Launching an attack against the British National Health Service (NHS), an editorial in the Investors Business Daily (IBD) warns against the outcome of the US adopting such a model, saying controlling medical costs in countries like Britain result in stories of people dying on waiting lists or being denied necessary care, and that scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the UK, what with the NHS calling the life of this brilliant man worthless, because of his physical handicaps.

Countering that, Jay Bookman at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution pointed out, born in UK, Prof Hawking has lived and worked there his entire life, with British newspapers The Guardian and Daily Telegraph saying Prof Hawking 'wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS'.

Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein called the IBD article a prime example of conservatives lying about healthcare.

Jason Zengerle of The New Republic, while endorsing Klein's objections to IBD's article, did not think author of the article deserved to be given credit for a conscious lie, as it was only theoretically plausible, if the writer believed Hawking was not British.

However, the point the IBD article's author was trying to make was that President Obama's healthcare plans would lead to the healthcare rationing, a fundamental feature of the British healthcare system.

A point Michelle Malkin, conservative blogger echoed, warning of 'the effects of socialised medicine in Britain, engineered by government-run cost-cutting panels on which Obamacare would be modeled, continue to wreak havoc on the elderly and infirm.'

A point that explicitly re-affirms former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's assertion that Obama wanted to create a 'death panel' that decided whether the elderly or disabled were 'worthy of health care'.

However, liberal bloggers in US have rejected the accusations saying Obama and his fellow Democrats healthcare plans bear no resemblance to the UK system, with one such blogger lamenting that Obama was not planning to follow the British example, of which NHS is a pretty great model.

By early Wednesday evening 'WeLoveTheNHS' had become the top trendy topic on Twitter, with most reflecting that despite the shortcomings of NHS, the British remain defiantly proud of it in the face of transatlantic criticism.