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 III. The general attitude to the health insurance scheme

Collection:: Economics Books

| MAJORITY REPORT. CHAPTER III. THE GENERAL ATTITUDE TO THE HEALTH INSURANCE SCHEME. THE FUNDAMENTAT, CHARACTER OF THE SCHEME. 19. It will be remembered that, whereas the Scheme of National Health Insurance received a cordial reception on its first presentation to Parliament, a considerable volume of Opposi- tion was developed during the passage of the Bill and in the ensuing period before the Act came into full operation. The opposition, coming from various quarters, was directed against different aspects of the measure and based on considerations which had little in common. Tt is unnecessary here to consider the nature of the criticisms and the opposition of the Medical Profession, the threatened passive resistance of certain sections of the population or any of the other phases of antagonism to the Act. It is only fair to record that some of the original opposition was not professedly opposition to the general principles of the Act, but was rather directed to the administra- tive arrangements and the financial provisions made under it. Yet even so, it might have been expected that the appointment of the present Commission with its wide terms of reference and the publicity given to them, would have resulted in adverse representations being made to us on lines familiar to those who remember the exacerbation of spirit of 1911 and 1912. 20. In fact, however, we have received very little evidence directed against the Scheme as a whole, nor have we any reason to think that there now exists any consider- able body of opinion adverse to the principle of National Health Insurance. The British Medical Association in their statement of evidence (Appendix XLVII) expressed a doubt as to whether under a limited expenditure out of public funds the best results in the way of Improvement of the national health might be expected to be derived by the application of the money on the lines of the Scheme of National Health Insurance. They suggested that there were a number of other directions in which an equivalent expenditure would probably produce greater benefit to the public health, and they gave as instances of this, proper housing, town planning with due provision of open spaces and recreation facilities, smoke abatement, a pure milk supply, aid to medical research, and the like. Dr. B. G. M. Baskett submitted a statement (Appendix CXIX) in which he expressed the view that the efforts of the State to promote improvement in the general health of the community were not most profitably directed through a Health Insurance Scheme, and that in short ‘‘ the only secure method

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