NATIONAL HEALTH SCHEME FOR BRITAIN

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 41, 18 February 1944, Page 5

NATIONAL HEALTH SCHEME FOR BRITAIN

FREE TO EVERYBODY

Proposals Estimated To Cost £148,000,000

RUGBY, Feb. 17,

British Official Wireless Rec. 1 p.m. RUGBY, Feb. 17. Proposals for a national health service issued by the Minister of Health, Mr. Henry Willink, and the Secretary of State for Scotland, Mr. Thomas Johnson, provide for a complete medical service free of charge for everybody in Great Britain, including the family doctor for every man, woman and child. Personal doctor-patient relationship and free choice is to be preserved, and the whole service is based on the family doctor idea. General practitioners would work as at present, separately or in groups or from specially provided and equipped health centres. All the necessary drugs and medicines and all except the more expensive appliances or replacements would be provided free. There is to be a complete, improved hospital service and no charge is to be made by hospitals, whatever treatment is necessary, and all cases will go to the hospital, where they will receive the best possible treatment. Voluntary hospitals are to be invited to take part under their own management, and there is to be visiting and inspection of all hospitals by the medical, nursing, catering and other experts. A full specialist and consultant service would be available through the family doctor at hospital clinics or at home, as required, while there are to be a home nursing service and services for the care of teeth and eyes as soon as they can be established. The proposals are published in a White Paper, which says the new services must ensure in future that every man, woman and child can rely on getting all the advice, treatment and care they may need in matters of personal health, and that what they get shall be the best medical and other facilities available, and that their getting them shall not depend on whether they can pay for them or not. Three Freedoms Provided The proposals represent what the Government believes means bringing into effect the operation of a comprehensive national health service. The Government wants the proposals to be freely examined and discussed so that legislative proposals may be quickly submitted to Parliament and may be largely agreed upon. The estimated cost of the service will be about £148,000,000 compared With £65,000,000 spent out of the public funds at present. This sum will be met partly from taxes and rates and partly from the contributions of the public to whatever new scheme of social insurance is established. It will probably include the payments of about £33,000,000 a year to doctors and chemists. Three freedoms are laid down as general principles in the organisation of the service: (1) Freedom for the people to use or not to use the facilities at their own wish without compulsion whether of patient or doctor; (2) freedom for the people to choose their own medical advisers; (3) freedom for the doctor to pursue his professional methods in his own individual way. The scheme provides for the setting up of necessary local administration and local health services, the aim being to secure a complete organised service without destra*»ing the independence and traditions to which voluntary hospitals attach value. The White Paper proposes that the standards of remuneration be settled nationally and will not rule out private practice to meet the needs of patients who will want this, but where doctors undertake private practice the number of patients they will be permitted to take, and consequently the remuneration will be adjusted. The aim of the service is to encourage a new attitude to health and gradually get rid of the idea that the doctor, hospital and clinic are the means of mending ill-health rather than of increasing good health.