Health

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Health

• Reforms
• Did they meet the needs of the British people?

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Health-National Health Act, 1948

• unified health care treatment, free at point of
  usage. The Act was delayed for 2 years
• Opposition to the bill came from the doctors
  concerned
• State direction
• Loss of paying patients
• Compromise- pay beds and doctors could charge for
  consultancies

Ministry of Health poster 'The seven rules of
health'
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The NHS

• Abolished most distinctions between rich and poor
  patients
• Increased the availability of health care in
  1950 165,000 patients saw specialists who would
  not have done so before 1939

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The NHS

• Campaigns of vaccination and prevention reduced
  scourges such as TB, polio and pneumonia
• Overall provision of hospitals, health centres,
  doctors,nurses and their medical knowledge
  increased

Glaswegians queuing for X-ray screening for
tuberculosis (TB) in George Square, on the final
day of the campaign in 1957.
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Health-expected initial demand would be high due
to suppressed demand

• Estimated to cost 140m in 1948, it cost 208m.
  By 1950 estimated cost had risen to 358m
• Critics claimed it was wasteful and pandered to
  minor ailments. Others argued that not enough was
  being spent

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Success

• Between 1946 and 1950 infant mortality rates fell
  50 and childhood scourges like rickets and
  malnutrition were almost eliminated
• NHS was a major achievement unequalled in Europe

photograph dates from around 1900.
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Criticisms

• enormous expense and heavy burden on finances
  charges introduced for some services in 1951
• Inundated with a backlog of untreated problems
• Plans for new hospitals and health centres
  shelved

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Overall

• Despite this arguably the greatest single
  achievement in the story of the Welfare state

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Activity

• List the aims of the NHS Bill, piloted through
  Parliament by Aneurin Bevan, which became law in
  1946
• What evidence can you find to support the view
  that the national Health Service was an instant
  success with ordinary people?