MAJORITY REPORT. 
CHAPTER II. 
THE SCHEME OF NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE, 
HISTORY OF THE SCHEME. 
7. The Scheme of National Health Insurance in this 
country had its origin in the National Insurance Act of 1911, 
which was described in its Preamble as ‘‘ an Act to provide for 
insurance against loss of health and the prevention and cure 
of sickness and for purposes incidental thereto.” The Scheme 
came into operation on the 15th July, 1912, and had therefore 
been in operation for a period of 12 years at the time when we 
were appointed to make the first general and comprehensive 
investigation into its working. 
8. During these 12 years the Scheme of Health Insurance 
has not been without its history—a history which is reflected in 
a fairly continuous series of amending Acts of varying degrees 
of importance stretching from 1913 to the Consolidating Act of 
1924. These various legislative alterations may, broadly, be 
ascribed to two main causes. In the first place, the original Act, 
viewed merely as a piece of legislation, was planned on a generous 
scale, and was drafted on the assumption that special provision 
should be made for any class of the population which appeared 
to call for special treatment. For example, aliens and those 
workers whose conditions of employment guaranteed them pay- 
ment of wages during a certain period of incapacity, were 
the subject of special legislative provision. Moreover, other 
sections of the Act aimed at dispensing justice as between indi- 
viduals in matters where abstract justice could only be achieved 
by machinery which in the circumstances could not fail to be 
burdensome in administration. As examples of such it may be 
permissible to cite the original provision made for the calculation 
and the imposition of penalties for arrears, the provision with 
regard to late entrants to insurance, and the arrangements for 
transfer between compulsory and voluntary insurance. In 
the light of subsequent events the original Act might be 
criticised for its implicit underlying assumption that the indivi- 
duals composing the population are * classifiable ’’ in a sense 
in which, in fact, they are not. Consequently, no doubt, certain 
sections of the Act, irreproachable in themselves and based on the 
assumption that the population as a whole was stabilised, were 
found to be out of touch with the realities of the situation. 
In short, the original Act was in many respects complex 
with a complexity which in practice yielded no adequate com- 
pensating advantage, and the realisation of this fact led to one 
series of amendments, those aiming at simplification of enactment 
and of administration.