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 XI. Proposal for dependants' allowances

Collection:: Economics Books

a 4] MAJORITY REPORT. the potentialities of serious difficulty, financial and admini- strative, which are latent in an increase in this particular benefit, and we can accordingly make no recommendation of the kind for which we have been asked by the witnesses who have brought this question to our notice. DEPENDANTS’ ALLOWANCES 314. As a third possibility we have examined the question of providing allowances for dependants similar to those under the Unemployment Insurance Scheme, leaving the basic rates of sickness and disablement benefits unchanged. 315. From the Second Report of the Actuarial Committee it will be seen that calculations have been made of the effect of giving the same rates of allowance as under that Scheme ; but as these would bring the contribution for men up to 9%d. a week we have ruled out this possibility and turned our attention to two other possible plans either of which could be financed within the present contributions. These are (1) an addition of 8s. a week to the sickness benefit in respect of a wife and an addition of 6d. in respect of a child, one-half of these rates being provided during the payment of disablement benefit, (2) an addition to the sickness benefit in respect of either a wife or a child of 2s. a week with a proportionate addition of 1s. a week to disablement benefit. Of these two schemes we prefer the second, mainly on the ground that the former, involving as it does a rate of 6d. a week for any dependent child could hardly in that respect be of much practical value. 316. A question of some difficulty which calls for consideration at the outset, relates to the provision to be made in respect of wives and the extent to which that provision should be affected by the consideration that in certain circumstances the wife, being herself a wage-earner, is not wholly or in many cases even partly dependent on her husband. We have come to the con- clusion, however, that for Health Insurance purposes the wife should in all cases be regarded as dependent on her husband, and that accordingly the additional allowance should always be paid in respect of the wife, even where she is herself a wage- earner. It is true that such a wife is not ordinarily a dependant for the purposes of the additional allowance payable under the Unemployment Insurance Scheme. In the circumstances of the Health Insurance Scheme, however; we consider that the proposal which we advocate can be supported not merely on very cogent grounds of administrative convenience, but on other grounds sub- stantial in themselves. At present wage-earning wives are largely concentrated in certain parts of the country (as in Lancashire) and in certain Societies, and if wage-earning wives were ex- cluded from any Scheme for the pavment of dependants’ allow-

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