Daily Newspaper
In the early 1900s the government became
increasingly aware of the health problems
facing ordinary people. They were realising
that the poor still lived in terrible housing, and
that the sick could not afford medical care.
The rates would be as follows:
In 1911 the government introduced the
National Insurance Scheme. Workers and their
employers made weekly contributions to a
central fund, which was then used to give the
workers sickness benefit, and free medical care
from doctors working for the scheme, if they
became ill.
The benefits the National Health Service
brought were things like the fact that it was
available to all people. The other major
benefit was that it was planned to cover all
necessary forms of health care. In 1945 the
new Labour government was elected and it
1946 its Bill to introduce a NHS was passed by
Parliament.
The problem was with this was that it only
catered for the employed. This meant that
women and children were very often not
covered by the insurance scheme. Neither
were the elderly, the mentally ill, and the
chronically ill.
After this, the National Health Service was
introduced. However there was lots of
opposition to this. This was due to a few
reasons.
Local authorities and voluntary
organisations
Under the NHS 3,000 hospital in Britain would
be nationalised. The local authorities and
voluntary bodies who currently ran the
hospitals opposed this.
The cost
The enormous cost involved was argued over a
lot. Bevan agreed that the NHS was going to
be an expensive venture, but he argued that the
nation had to afford it and could afford it.
The British Medial Association
The stiffest opposition came from the British
Medical Association (BMA), they represented
the medical profession. Doctors didn’t want to
be employed by the government and to be told
where to work, because they would no longer
be able to sell their services. They feared that
this would result in a loss of income.
William Beveridge is somebody who proposed
a ‘free national health service’. It meant that
everyone who was employed would pay
different rates depending on who they were.
The unemployed would not pay but would still
be liable to received medical treatment.
Med 4s. 3d.
Women 3s. 6d.
Employer 3s. 3d.
Employer 2s. 6d.
Despite the opposition to the idea, it still
pulled through. When the BMA ran a survey
in 1946, 54 percent said that they would refuse
to co-operate with the NHS idea. And by 1948
this number was risen to 90 percent.
However, Bevan (who was the other main
person pushing the NHS idea) had a powerful
personality therefore he one the vote of many
people. The support of hospital consultants
was won by promising them a salary and still
allowing them to treat private patients even in
the NHS hospitals. When in July 1948, the
NHS was finally put into place, 90 percent of
doctors had enrolled.
The NHS made women’s health much more
important and still does so. Today women are
four times as likely to consult a doctor as a
man.
Despite the advantages and benefits of the
NHS there are still possible problems. Since
the NHS aims to provide the best care
possible, and since medicine has advanced
since when it was began, the costs have risen
hugely. The cost over a year when it began
was very little, even in 1970 it was less than
250 million. However today it is well over
3,500 million. Compromises had to be made,
one of the first being prescription charges,
introduced in the early 1950s. Now there are
hospital beds left unused, even though they are
needed, because the price is too high for
patients. The NHS is still costing less than
other systems, in the USA the private health
care costs 12% of nation income while the
NHS only costs 6 %.