NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 123, 19 February 1944, Page 6

NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE

Proposals In Britain ESTIMATED TO COST £148,000,000 (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, February 17. Proposals for a national health service which have been issued by the Minister of Health, Mr. Henry Willink, and the Secretary of. State for Scotland, Mr. Thomas Johnston, .provide for a complete medical service free of charge for everybody iu Great Britain, including a family doctor for every man, woman, and child. The personal doctor-patient relationship and free choice are to be preserved, and the whole service is to be 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 necessary drugs and medicines and all except the more expensive appliances would be provided free. There is to be a complete, improved hospital service, no charge is to be made by the hospitals for whatever treatment is necessary, and all cases will go to hospital. where they will receive the best possible treatment. Voluntary hospitals are to be invited to take part, under their own management, and there will be visiting and inspection of all hospitals by medical, nursing, catering, and other experts. Full Specialist Service. A full specialist and consultant service would be available through the family doctor at hospital clinics or the 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 that 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, 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. 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 on. The estimated cost of the service would be about £148,000,000, compared with £68,000,000 spent out of the pubic funds at present. This sum would 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 payments of about £33,000,000 a year to doctors and chemists. Three Freedoms. Three freedoms are laid down as general principles in the organization of the service:—(l) Freedom for the people to use or not to use the facilities at their own wish, without compulsion, whether patient or doctor: (2) freedom for the people to choose their own medical advisers; and (3) freedom for the doctor to pursue his professional methods in his own individual way. The scheme provides for setting up the necessary local administrations and local health services, the aim being to secure a complete organized service without destroying their independence and traditions, to which voluntary hospitals attach value. The White Paper proposes that the standards of remuneration shall be settled nationally and will not rule out private practice to meet the needs of patients who will want this, but. where a doctor undertakes private practice, the number of patients he is permitted to take, and consequently his 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 doctor and hospital clinic are the means of mending ill-health rather than of increasing good health.