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 V. The development of the health services

Collection:: Economics Books

MAJORITY REPORT. = 1 TaE LiocAL, MEDICAL AND PANEL COMMITTEES. 126. Passing now to the consideration of the Local Medical Committees and the Panel Committees, we would observe in the first place that these bodies have proved a valuable element in the medical side of the Insurance Scheme. The principle of having in each area a representative body of medical men, to whom professional questions are referred and by whom many of the administrative problems affecting the insurance practitioners are considered, has evidently been acceptable to both lay and professional opinion. It might be held that the same results would be obtained by the presence of elected or co-opted medical members on the local administrative bodies. But we think—and evidently the framers of the Scheme thought also—that something more than this was desirable ; and that to secure the full co-operation of the Medical Profession, so necessary to the scheme of medical benefit, the independent position given by the two statutory and purely professional Committees was essential. It is true that in most cases the two Committees have the same personnel, and indeed we are told that the Ministry has ii many areas recognised the Panel Committee as the TLiocal Medical Committee. Yet each represents a distinct idea, the former the effective voice of the practitioners in contract with the Insurance Committees, the latter the combined experience and opinion of all types of medical men in the area whether “‘ on the panel’ or in the most exalted specialist practice.” Under such an extension of medical benefit as we recommend in Chapter X and even more so in any larger developments of the future, the two Committees will necessarily tend to coalesce and become, if they are continued, the single expression of professional wisdom in the area. We do not doubt that they will be continued in any immediate develop- ments, and equally we see in them the hint of a local professional committee working side by side with the single local health authority in all parts of the country. AVAILABILITY AND FINANCE. 127. Much of the evidence we have received on the general subject with which we are now dealing has been directed towards two highly important problems, namely, the classes of persons for whom the public and insurance medical services should be avail- able, and the manner in which the costs of such services should be met. At one extreme are those who would limit the services strictly to the necessitous and finance them from public funds, leaving the rest of the population to make their private arrange- ments. Af the other are those who advocate the provision of a complete service for the whole population without distinction of class or means, the cost being defrayed entirely from Hxchequer orants and local rates.

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