Home
Politics
"It's very simple: I owe my life to the NHS. If it wasn't for the NHS I wouldn't have been alive to see our family's greatest moment -- when Barack became president and was sworn into the White House," she said.
Opponents seeking to derail the US leader's reform plans claim he is bent on a government takeover of private healthcare -- which he denies -- and some are holding up the NHS as a warning of what could befall the United States.
But the attacks have caused outrage in Britain, where a campaign of support for the NHS on micro-blogging website Twitter has attracted support from Prime Minister Gordon Brown and opposition Conservative leader David Cameron.
Kezia Obama said she fell ill during a visit to Britain seven years ago, telling the newspaper: "I suffered severe kidney failure and pancreatic problems so there was a very real chance I might not have made it.
"I was very down at the time but luckily I was here in Britain, in what was then a foreign country to me, where the doctors, nurses and surgeons cared for me like I was their own child."
Obama's stepmother, who attended his inauguration in January, also turned to the NHS two years ago when she needed two hip replacement operations.
"If I'd been asked to pay for my new hips, well, I wouldn't have been able to afford them. I would have without a doubt ended up confined to a wheelchair," she said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Opponents seeking to derail the US leader's reform plans claim he is bent on a government takeover of private healthcare -- which he denies -- and some are holding up the NHS as a warning of what could befall the United States.
But the attacks have caused outrage in Britain, where a campaign of support for the NHS on micro-blogging website Twitter has attracted support from Prime Minister Gordon Brown and opposition Conservative leader David Cameron.
Kezia Obama said she fell ill during a visit to Britain seven years ago, telling the newspaper: "I suffered severe kidney failure and pancreatic problems so there was a very real chance I might not have made it.
"I was very down at the time but luckily I was here in Britain, in what was then a foreign country to me, where the doctors, nurses and surgeons cared for me like I was their own child."
Obama's stepmother, who attended his inauguration in January, also turned to the NHS two years ago when she needed two hip replacement operations.
"If I'd been asked to pay for my new hips, well, I wouldn't have been able to afford them. I would have without a doubt ended up confined to a wheelchair," she said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
