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 XII. Consideration of certain major problems

Collection:: Economics Books

MAJORITY REPORT. 1553 Sr EE ticular woman, who leaves her work some time before her con- finement, has definitely given up her status as a wage earner lies at the root of the matter. Some test would have to be applied if the right to benefit depended on the settlement of the point. The choice of a test which is equitable and at the same time easy to apply has in similar circumstances in the past, e.g., in the original provisions of the 1911 Act relative to insured women giving up their work on marriage, proved to be so serious a difficulty as to have led to the abrogation of the system under which it arose, the right to benefit being now based on entirely different considerations 345. We have considered, as a possible way of meeting the difficulty of ascertaining ** intention,” a suggestion that the bene- fits should be paid at the confinement of every insured married woman, whether she was an ordinary employed contributor or in the special class (Class K), or in the ordinary free year’s insur- ance following cessation of employment. Under this plan the benefit would be paid yearly to about 91,000 women in Class K and to about 94,000 women who were either employed or in the free year. The number in the free year is probably relatively small. The suggestion then comes to this, that in order to pay about 90,000 women, who are normally working so as to induce them to stay away from work before and after confinement, payment would also have to be made to at least 90,000 other women who have recently married and in whose case the pre- sumption is that they have entirely given up work. We do not think that such a result can be contemplated. In the circum- stances we have not felt justified in asking the Actuarial Com- mittee to proceed further with the subject. 346. To one general point we may in conclusion refer. It would appear open to question whether in practice the benefits of this type could be, for long, limited to employed women. It seems not unreasonable to assume that following the adoption of such a scheme for the wage-earning mothers there would spring up an immediate and insistent demand for the extension of the benefits—or at any rate a part of them—to all mothers irrespec- tive of any question of employment. Such a demand would be Peculiarly difficult to resist. It would be urged—and with good reason—that the home-keeping mother was as deserving of the assistance of the State as the woman who had continued In industrial employment. The contrast between the position of the home receiving two sets of wages and the maintenance benefit with that receiving only one set of wages would be too marked to escape criticism. And if such criticism led to the extension of the provision to all mothers, the cost would at once be enormously increased and an expenditure of £6 to £8 millions a year, for maintenance alone, might have to be contemplated. =rra0 t ]

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