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. Ad by. time at so much per session. The latter method 1s difficult of application, except where a clinic is established. The former is difficult to administer economically unless estimates are sub- mitted in advance and some system of inspection and supervision is provided. GENERAL (CONCLUSIONS. 361. Reviewing all these considerations, we come to the con- clusion that no change should be recommended at present in the main provisions for dental treatment. A complete dental service would be eminently desirable. But it would cost about £4% millions a year, or 13d. on the contribution. A partial service has, as we have indicated, many defects and difficulties, medical as well as administrative. Any reasonable partial service would cost about £21 millions a year. Kven this smaller sum is not available within the present financial limits after provision has been made for those two extensions of benefit already described, which we think should rank higher in order of priority. Quite apart from financial considerations, there are indeed grounds on which it might be suggested that delay in this matter may not be wholly disadvantageous. ~~ The benefit, administered as an additional benefit, is still in an experimental stage, and much may yet be learned from further experience of its operation in its present form. On such questions as those of the cost involved, the reaction of dental treatment on health, possible methods of organisation and control, there is room for greater and more accurate knowledge than we possess at present; and it might reasonably be held that, in a matter of such great moment, we shall have a better prospect of building securely in the future, if meanwhile we are content to wait until a somewhat fuller experi- ence has been gained. In the varied system of provision of dental services as an additional benefit by numerous Approved Societies a useful arena for such experiment is given. Under these schemes 3,485 Societies and Branches in England, with a membership of about 10,700,000 insured persons, provide some form of dental treatment, and this number will certainly be increased when all the schemes under the second valuation be- come operative. In refraining from recommending dental treat- ment as a normal benefit, we are by no means leaving the insured persons without any provision at the cost of the insurance funds for the care of their teeth. Moreover, we consider that it is not irrelevant to the question before us to observe that the Dental Profession, consequent on the passing of the Dentists Act, 1821, is at present in a state of transition, and it might accordingly be suggested on various grounds that the present is an inoppor- tune moment to inaugurate a comprehensive scheme of dental benefit administered universally as a normal benefit under arrangements made by the Central Department on lines similar to those which govern medical benefit.

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