A Socialised Medical Service
1933 1933 1930s 21 pages The next step, a simple one, will be to make the medical services organised as above entirely free to all persons who desire to take advantage of them. All that will be necessary will be to exact no further contribution from insurance funds for medical benefit. Persons desir...
| Institution: | MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick |
|---|---|
| Language: | English English |
| Published: |
London : The Socialist Medical Association
1933
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10796/8584827F-684D-4267-8E5B-2E8CF4580FCF http://hdl.handle.net/10796/E4406D3B-E4C2-467C-B024-D2FDB3924DF9 |
| Summary: | 1933
1933
1930s
21 pages
The next step, a simple one, will be to make the medical services organised as above entirely free to all persons who desire to take advantage of them. All that will be necessary will be to exact no further contribution from insurance funds for medical benefit. Persons desirous of making use of the State Service will be asked to register, and all registering will be encouraged to undergo, without cost, a periodical medical examination. Those who register will have the opportunity of selecting any medical officer in the Service whose panel is not yet complete. Those who do not register and only apply for medical assistance when taken ill, obviously cannot be given this privilege. A doctor whose panel is not yet complete will be allocated to them. The panel doctor will now correspond to the Home Doctor as described in the complete scheme, and in the future no further part-time appointments, as a general rule, will be made in connection with this scheme. While these changes have been taking place, Municipal Health Centres will have been undergoing development; in these the Home Doctors will see their patients whenever possible, and to these Centres other clinical activities of the Public Medical Service will be transferred. The Local Authorities could be encouraged to build health centres by special grants from the Ministry of Health towards the erection of centres of approved design. 2. — POOR LAW It must be the object of legislation to get rid of the Poor Law Medical Service as rapidly as possible, and merge it with the other services for treating those not destitute. At the same time the supervision of all the district work under the Poor Law which is now entrusted to the Public Assistance Committees should be transferred to Public Health Committees. 3. — HOSPITALS AND INSTITUTIONS A very slight amendment of the present law will suffice to achieve what was clearly the intention of the framers of the Local Government Act, 1929. viz., the transference of all Poor Law Infirmaries to the Public Health Committees and their development as Municipal Hospitals under Section 131 of the Public Health Act. 1875. Pressure should then be made on the Local Authorities by the Ministry of Health to induce them to develop these Municipal Hospitals on the best lines possible, and as a preliminary to the abolition of all payments to withdraw from them all taint of the Poor Law by insisting that any payments made by patients should be determined and collected entirely apart from machinery of Public Assistance. It is possible at the present time for any charitably minded person to found and develop a voluntary hospital for the treatment of any kind of disease without consideration of the existing facilities 18
292/847/1/1 |
|---|---|
| Physical Description: | TEXT |