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Trump thought the British were protesting their health service. They weren't.

Thousands of protesters marched in London on Feb. 3, demanding more funds for the National Health Service. (Newsflare/AP)

LONDON — President Trump took a swing at Britain’s beloved national health service on Monday, tweeting that Britons were marching in the streets because their universal health-care system was financially strapped and dysfunctional.

“The Democrats are pushing for Universal HealthCare while thousands of people are marching in the UK because their U system is going broke and not working. Dems want to greatly raise taxes for really bad and non-personal medical care. No thanks!” he wrote.

But the thousands of Britons who took to the streets over the weekend were actually marching in support of the NHS and calling for greater government funding.

Trump's tweet about Britain’s universal health-care system — once said to be the closest thing that the British have to a national religion — provoked ire from across the political spectrum.

Jeremy Hunt, Britain’s health secretary, said he was proud to hail from a country where people have coverage “no matter the size of their bank balance.”

Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn of the Labour Party said that Trump was “wrong,” adding: “People were marching because we love our NHS and hate what the Tories are doing to it. Healthcare is a human right.”

The march was called “NHS in crisis: Fix it now” and was organized by the People’s Assembly and Health Campaigns Together. Demonstrators carried placards that read: “NHS: More staff, more beds, more funds” and “Saving lives costs money, Saving money costs lives.”

Responding to Trump’s comments, the march organizers said they were campaigning against a U.S.-style health-care system that they said was “expensive, inefficient and unjust.”

It’s hard to overstate just how proud Britons are of their “free at the point of use” health-care system, established after World War II. Some have pointed out that Britain spends a lower percentage of its GDP on health care than the United States does and that life expectancy is longer in the United Kingdom.

In the opening ceremony for the 2012 London Olympics, the NHS was celebrated with a dance sequence with nurses and patients. In the lead-up to the Brexit vote in June 2016, the pro-Brexit side famously said that leaving the bloc could mean that an extra 350 million pounds ($467 million) a week could be spent on health care.

“We send the EU £350m a week — let’s fund our NHS instead,” was the slogan plastered on the side of a red campaign bus.

Britain has an aging population, and the rising cost of new technology and years of austerity have contributed to notable pressures on the system. Britain has also had, once again, a terrible winter flu season, and hospitals nationwide are struggling to cope with the spikes in demand.

There is a great deal of speculation that Trump’s tweet may have been inspired by a segment on the NHS by Fox News Channel, which the president frequently watches. In fact, he followed up his tweet on the NHS by thanking Fox News for “exposing the truth.”

Nigel Farage, a former leader of the U.K. Independence Party, was on the Fox News segment, saying that Britain’s health service was “pretty much at a breaking point” because of a “population crisis.”

“We just haven’t got enough hospitals, we haven’t got enough doctors, we haven’t got enough facilities,” he said.

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