The Health Services White Paper : The Labour Party's policy
1944-09 1944 1940s 22 pages - 2 - II. THE ESSENTIAL PROPOSALS 1. There is to be a National Health Service, available to everyone, rich and poor, young and old, men and women. 2. The Service will be comprehensive and complete. It will cover everything, from minor ailments to major surgery, from m...
| Institution: | MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick |
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| Language: | English English |
| Published: |
September 1944
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10796/F9D06545-729C-4705-9007-D1DBFA6EF732 http://hdl.handle.net/10796/8BEDD379-C7B4-44A2-9787-D4083C1B2C4F |
| Summary: | 1944-09
1944
1940s
22 pages
- 2 - II. THE ESSENTIAL PROPOSALS 1. There is to be a National Health Service, available to everyone, rich and poor, young and old, men and women. 2. The Service will be comprehensive and complete. It will cover everything, from minor ailments to major surgery, from maternity to tuberculosis, from dental care to mental illness. It will include the family doctor and specialist, the midwife and home nurse, clinic and hospital. It will include drugs and medicines, and should include all appliances. (1) 3. The Service will be free of charge to all its users. It will be paid for by all, through taxes, rates, and social security contributions. 4. The Service will be planned - not haphazard as at present. Central planning will be done by the Ministry of Health, responsible through its Minister to Parliament and the people. Because the units of an efficient health service particularly an efficient hospital and specialist service - must be large, the main local planning authorities will cover areas larger than almost any existing local authorities. These new joint authorities will be representative of the constituent local authorities - the county and county boroughs, and through them responsible to the people. 5. For planning to be effective, it must be backed by executive power and money. So the joint authorities will take over the existing local authority hospitals of all types, and will make grants to voluntary hospitals which enter the scheme and come under the plan, on the basis of work done for the scheme. 6. Specialists for all will be based on the hospitals, municipal and voluntary. They will visit clinics, health centres, and patients' homes when necessary. 7. Every member of the public will be able to choose his own family doctor from those in the scheme, provided the doctor chosen has not already got his full quota of patients. That is, free choice will continue. 8. Health Centres, where teams of family doctors will work together, will be set up. Inside the centres, there will be no financial competition; thus competition for patients will be avoided. 9. Home nursing will be made available to all. 10. At the outset, and for some time to come there will be a severe shortage of doctors, general practitioners, and particularly specialists and dentists. The distribution of specialists, who are now too much concentrated in the large towns, will have to be improved. This will follow automatically from proper hospital planning. To make sure that the general practitioners are better distributed, two special proposals are made:- (1) The White Paper makes the fantastic proposal that only the cheaper appliances should be free. Why poor people should be victimised because they need expensive appliances is not explained. Clearly, all appliances and replacements should be free, except where breakages are due to the carelessness of the owner.
292/847/3/166 |
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| Physical Description: | TEXT |