Report of the Royal Commission on National Health Insurance

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1740277147

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-132094

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Report of the Royal Commission on National Health Insurance

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Stationery Office

Year of publication:: 1926

Scope:: XII, 394 S.

Digitisation:: 2020

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter VIII. The approved society system

Collection:: Economics Books

34 MAJORITY REPORT. and branches does not show to disadvantage. Tn this connexion we may refer to the evidence of Sir Walter Kinnear in reply to Q. 748-746. 207. Closely allied to the criticism that the Approved Society system is unduly costly in administration—indeed one of the causes for this alleged expensiveness—is the overlapping of effort for which Societies are frequently condemned arising by reason of the fact that Approved Societies may carry on business in any part of the country. In any moderate-sized town the insured persons may be scattered amongst some hundreds of Societies and branches, each of which has to make arrangements for the administration of the cash benefits to members entitled to them. For example, we were informed that in Liverpool 488 Societies have members—in Bolton 285, in Brighton 304, in Norwich o13, in Reading 245, and in Tynemouth 168 (Kinnear, Q. 522). 208. Again, Mr. Alban Gordon says (App. XIII, 7): ““ If any area is analysed it will be found to contain a large number of Societies possessing a ludicrously small membership in that dis- trict. For example, in Dundee (which is an illustration chosen at random) there are 217 separate Societies (ignoring branches), of which 99 have less than 10 members in the town, 52 of these having only one member. These Societies have their Head Offices at London, Manchester, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Leeds, Portsmouth, Newcastle, Tunbridge Wells, etc.”’ 209. The Scottish Miners’ Federation Approved Society, in referring to the fact that there are 98 Societies, each with only one meniber resident in Glasgow, say that ** were the Glasgow area treated as a single unit in preference to having approved units studded all over like a cluster of nebula it would be possible to administer the area at an enormous economic saving to the mmsured population *’ (App. X, 18). It should be remembered in connexion with this allegation of overlapping and diffusion of effort that even where a Society may initially recruit members only within a limited area, these members may later become scattered ; further, that in the case of any household comprising several insured persons, each of these may be in a different Society, and that the home may therefore require to he visited by the representatives of a number of competing organisations. Indeed in the extreme case represented by the National Amulga- mated Approved Society, members of the same family, although in the same Society, may be visited by different agents, if their membership in the National Amalgamated Approved Society has been effected through the representatives of different companies interested in that organisation. The fact that the Scheme is not organised on a geographical basis adds undoubtedly to the labour involved in the administration of medical benefit, which must necessarily be conducted on a territorial basis. As the contributions on which the title to medical benefit depends are

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