National Service for Health : the Labour Party's post-war policy
1943-04 1943 1940s 24 pages provide a medical service which is comprehensive or open to all, or well-equipped for the prevention of ill-health. Moreover, the hospital system is an unplanned medley of public and voluntary institutions, without any unified control, and with many financial embarrassmen...
| Institution: | MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick |
|---|---|
| Language: | English English |
| Published: |
London : Labour Party
April 1943
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10796/0C99B864-E1CE-438E-80F0-2738814905CE http://hdl.handle.net/10796/A74C7476-63E9-49DF-BDE9-49E31B285097 |
| Summary: | 1943-04
1943
1940s
24 pages
provide a medical service which is comprehensive or open to all, or well-equipped for the prevention of ill-health. Moreover, the hospital system is an unplanned medley of public and voluntary institutions, without any unified control, and with many financial embarrassments. Certain services in particular, such as the provision for care of mothers before, during, and after child-birth, and the School Medical Service, are in special need of expansion. How are these needs to be supplied? How are these defects to be remedied? CHAPTER III WHY A STATE MEDICAL SERVICE IS NECESSARY Having considered what kind of medical service is required and what the existing service is like, we can now answer the first of our two questions : "Is a State Medical Service Necessary?" A Central Health Authority We have seen that there is need for a Central Authority, empowered to plan the lay-out of the National Health Services, including the medical service, on the basis of a scientific assessment of the needs of the whole nation, and to see that the plan is carried into effect. We have seen, too, that this need is not now being met; the Ministry of Health lacks the power to pull the medical service into shape as a coherent whole. The conclusion surely is that a Central Authority, responsible to Parliament, must be given the powers appropriate to the central organ of a comprehensive National Service for Health. That Authority must be in a position, for instance, to weld together the separate sections of our hospital system into an economically-planned service. Just as the Ministry of War directs the strategic placing of the Home Forces for defence against invasion, so this Central Authority should be able to plan the strategic disposition of the nation's defences against ill-health. Local Health Authorities The Central Authority, however, should not attempt to run the whole machinery. That would mean certain breakdown. Wide powers must be left to Local Authorities; it is they who must be responsible for the detailed administration of the service. That administration must be organised in units of convenient size ; it must bring together all the necessary services at convenient Health Centres ; and it must be elastic, allowing for considerable diversity of treatment. At present Local Authorities are not in a position to do all this; they cannot construct a comprehensive scheme which will govern the policy of voluntary as well as public hospitals ; they cannot bring together a team of general practitioners at a series of Health Centres, or provide a full service of specialists to patients who need them. Nor can the necessary powers, with the necessary democratic control, be obtained except as part of a comprehensive National Health Service. Doctors The same conclusion emerges when we consider how the nation can obtain the services it most needs from the doctors, whilst affording to the doctors all the consideration that it owes to them? Unless the doctor has a salary, and a prospect of pension, which frees him from economic dependence upon paying patients, he cannot devote his full energy to the prevention as well as to the cure of ill-health. Unless the community provides that economic security, it cannot direct where the doctor's work would best be used in the national interest. Only a salaried medical staff, as part of a National Health Service, can meet the need. 12
36/H24/40 |
|---|---|
| Physical Description: | TEXT |