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:: Minority report

Collection:: Economics Books

316 MINORITY REPORT. 82. Again, we agree with the recommendations to extend the content of medical benefit by the inclusion of specialist and con- sultant services, but we cannot agree to the cost being met solely from insurance funds. The need for extension along these lines was realised in 1914, and Parliament voted moneys for the purpose. We submit that these services should also be met under the provisions of Section 85 of the Act of 1924. The estimated cost of the proposed extension is £1} million a year. 83. We have recommended that medical benefit should include attendance at confinement. We shall refer to the maternity service later and it will suffice at this point to say that we see no season why the cost of this service should not be met from insurance funds. 84. We agree with our colleagues as to the need for dental services and as to the ultimate beneficial effect upon benefit expenditure, but we view with alarm the decision of our colleagues not to include dental benefit as a part of the medical benefit, especially when it is predicted that the aggregate surplus at the second valuation will amount to 40 to 45 million pounds, and that 3,485 Societies and branches in England with a member- ship of 10,700,000 insured persons ‘* provided some form of dental treatment and this number will certainly be increased when all the schemes under the second valuation become effective.” 85. In our opinion there are several grave objections against allowing the present method to continue. =~ We have already submitted that it could not have been foreseen by Parliament that there would be a surplus over the whole insured population sufficient to provide benefits ‘ in the nature of medical benefit * for nearly the whole insured population, otherwise such benefits would have been provided as normal benefits and not as additional benefits. In any case we submit that Parliament should consider the position in the light of experience gained since 1911. 86. A further, and we feel, a fundamental objection to leaving the matter where it is, to be found in para. 81 of the Majority Report. ‘ There is neither uniformity in the selection of benefits nor in the content of the same benefit as given by different Societies, with the result that there is widespread con- fusion in the minds of the members as to what precisely their rights are,” and again, a witness from the Department considers “that the administration of additional benefits in the nature of treatment by Approved Societies can never be very satisfactory.” (Brock, Q. 23,996.) 87. Another objection is that in some of the smaller Approved Societies ¢¢ the sum available each year (for additional treatment benefits) . . . would not exceed a few pounds, the whole of which might be exhausted in the first two or three claims for benefit which had to be dealt with.’ (para. 213.)

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