In fact, Britain's oft-maligned National Health Service last week was on the receiving end of an outpouring of love and affection it hasn't felt in years, owing to a growing backlash against what many here see as lies and calumnies being spread about the NHS by critics of President Obama's attempt to overhaul health care in the United States.

Some of those critics have branded the NHS as "evil" and "Orwellian," an example of socialized medicine to be avoided at all costs. They blast the system, which offers free health care to all, as an expensive failure that denies new drugs to cancer victims, blocks elderly people from certain kinds of treatment, and puts a low value on human life.

But such allegations have angered many Britons who this week hit back in the blogosphere, in print, and over the airwaves to defend one of their country's most jealously guarded institutions.

A Twitter campaign to rally support for the NHS has attracted so many thousands of messages earlier this week that the newly launched "welovetheNHS" site crashed.

The left-leaning Guardian newspaper devoted an entire page to debunking some of the more scandalous accusations circulating in the United States, including the claim from Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R., Iowa) that fellow Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D., Mass.) wouldn't receive treatment in Britain for his brain tumor because of his age.

The severely disabled scientist Stephen Hawking declared, "I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS," pointedly rebutting claims by Investor's Business Daily that he "wouldn't have a chance" of survival here in his homeland because of treatment rationing.

"The United States lies between Costa Rica and Slovenia in the World Health Organization's ranking of health-care systems . . . which puts them in 37th place," physician Keith Hopcroft wrote in a commentary piece in the right-wing tabloid The Sun. "The U.K.? 18th. I rest my doctor's case."