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:: Reservation by Sir Andrew Duncan and Professor Alexander Gray

Collection:: Economics Books

24 1, TA MAJORITY REPORT : RESERVATION. here is not, strictly speaking, a medical one. Ultimate victory may come from the sanitary side of medical science. In other cases where the individual is cured the cause of public health may, or may not, be promoted. ‘‘ Postponement of the event of death,” which is sometimes cited as proving an advance in public health, may in fact tend in the opposite direction. We do not here refer to one factor, obvious although frequently overlooked. in which medical attendance, even while improving the health of the community, must tend towards an increase in the actual volume of sickness. very one who is sick and recovers lives to be sick later on, and prolongation of life means, among other things, that in the age distribution of the population, a larger proportion fall within those groups which are more exposed to the risk of illness. Without considering remoter consequences, ““ postponement of the event of death ’’ may therefore mean, in many cases must mean, an increase in the number of illnesses requiring medical attention. 8. In this possible direct increase in the volume of sickness, there is, however, nothing to cause perturbation from the point of view of public health, but it is different when we turn to con- sider the possibility of those remoter consequences which do in fact exist. Apart from occasional and fortuitous illnesses which may befall the healthiest, and those due to environment, it is @ matter of common knowledge that a large volume of illness is due to constitutional predisposition and to a diminished power of resistance which is an inalienable part of the sufferer’s equipment for life. There are many of whom it can be predicted even before birth that they will probably be ill for the greater part of such life as may be granted to them, and perhaps even the nature of the illness from which they may be expected to suffer—unless in the interval medical science has made notable advances—can be broadly foretold. Clearly when those who have a lessened immunity from disease are enabled, as a result of the postpone- ment of the event of death, to leave behind them heirs to their weaknesses, the general cause of public health will in many cases have been frustrated and not promoted by the medical attention which they have received. In such matters it is difficult to obtain; strict proof one way or the other, but when we are inclined to be complacent over the postponement of the event of death, we should remember that there is at least a prima facie possibility that over a considerable part of the field, the application of medical science—however immediately advantageous to the individual—may not in its ultimate results be wholly free from certain consequences disadvantageous to the community at large. Tt is the honourable and charitable foundation of the medical pro- fession that suffering, wherever it exists, is to be relieved; that life, so long as it may be, is to be strengthened and continued, even if the doctor may be convinced in his mind that it is being strenothened only to meet vears of labour and sorrow.

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