The twentieth-century world, Year 11: the Liberal reforms, Beveridge and the NHS (Health and the people option)

More than a quarter of the people lived in poverty

提示Close to the figure Charles Booth had found in London.

为什么Charles Booth's survey of London had reached a similar result. Rowntree showed that the problem was not confined to the capital, and that the main causes were low wages, old age and sickness, not laziness.

A large share of volunteers were unfit to serve

提示The army's own doctors turned many away.

为什么Politicians worried about whether Britain could defend its empire or compete with Germany's industry. Concern for 'national efficiency' became a reason for reform.

Free school meals

提示A hungry child cannot learn.

为什么It was followed by medical inspections in schools. These were among the first of the Liberal government's social reforms.

1908

提示The first payments were made at the start of the following year.

为什么It gave up to five shillings a week to people over 70 on low incomes, paid from taxes. For the first time the old had an income that did not depend on the workhouse or charity.

Sick pay and medical treatment

提示Worker, employer and the state each paid into the scheme.

为什么It covered wage earners only, not their families. Sick pay was ten shillings a week for the first thirteen weeks. A second part of the Act gave unemployment pay in certain trades.

1942

提示In the middle of the Second World War.

为什么It proposed that the state should protect everyone 'from the cradle to the grave'. It became a best-seller. The war had made people readier to accept government action and to expect a better country afterwards.

squalor; idleness

提示One is about filthy housing, the other about having no work.

为什么Disease was to be met by a free health service, want by national insurance, ignorance by schooling, and the two in the blanks by better homes and full employment.

5 July 1948

提示Three years, almost to the month, after Labour's election victory.

为什么From that day, medical, dental and nursing care was free to everyone at the point of use, paid for from taxes. A leaflet sent to every household explained that anyone, rich or poor, could use it.

Aneurin Bevan

提示A Welsh former coal miner.

为什么He brought more than 2,500 hospitals under national ownership and negotiated hard with the doctors, many of whom opposed his plan. He later said that he had won over the hospital consultants by 'stuffing their mouths with gold'.

People live longer, and new treatments and technology are expensive

提示Success creates more patients; science creates more options.

为什么Its founders hoped that a healthier nation would need less care. Instead an older population has more long-term illness. Charges for prescriptions were brought in as early as 1952, and how to pay for health care has been argued over ever since.