Stephen Hawking was kept alive under Britain’s universal socialized health system, the National Health Service (NHS). Hawking was a big proponent of that system, and he himself said that he would not have lived as long as he had without the NHS. How much did it cost? That’s impossible to say because under the NHS, people don’t get a bill and the costs of treating them aren’t itemized by individual. We can only guess that the costs were probably very, very, very high. The cost of running the NHS is funded by general taxation, which means that everybody in Britain pays for it. And everybody in Britain also knows that if they were unlucky enough to suffer an illness, including something as bad or worse than what happened to Hawking, they wouldn’t have to worry about going bankrupt or not having healthcare. Source
