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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