Comments on: What we can learn from WW2 health reform

By: George Beaton

George Beaton — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 01:09:14 +0000

I’m afraid the article missed the one factor which assured the NHS of success. Everyone, Healthy care providers AND consumers wanted it to work. Prior the NHS, GP visits were paid for on a per visit basis. A GP visit was the last resort for poor working class people after they had consulted relatives who may have been nurses or local “wise women”.

GPs had very sporadic and uncertain incomes, generally poor in summer and a bit better in winter. What the NHS gave them was a guaranteed and regular income. GP’s got paid 21 shillings for every patient who was registered with them (the population, being still in the throes of rationing understood this concept very well). Patients were not to be charged on a per visit basis.

This meant that doctors could now plan their lives much more securely. They had incentives to be good, caring and pleasant (to attract patients to sign on with them) and the public could now go to their doctor without financial worry.

Because both sides would benefit from the plan, it worked. In the USA it is quite different. The Medical profession and the Insurance industry stand to loose from any incursion into their monopoly and the voting public are in a relatively weak position.

By: MIKESTUCHBERY

MIKESTUCHBERY — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 21:50:36 +0000

Michael, thanks for the reference to the Fabian Society, I’ll be doing some reading tonight!

I was just in the US - debates about healthcare are getting just as heated as the invective between McCain and Obama supporters prior to the election.

By: michael crook

michael crook — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:55:26 +0000

Well, we’ve all seen “sicko”, but the reality is that when you go the states about half of all advertising is either health insurers telling everyone the US health system is the best in the world or pharmaceutical companies flogging their latest “cure all”. They know, as does Rupert Murdoch, that selling perceptions is all you need to do. Sad.
The role of the English Fabian society in providing the intellectual and organisational foundation for the creation of the NHS and indeed the entire welfare state should not be understated. Fabian “summer schools” in the nineteen thirties provided much of the framework for the NHS and welfare reforms and over 200 of the newly elected Labour Government MPs were active members of the Fabian Society.

By: AR

AR — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 08:53:53 +0000

The truly amazing thing is that even the utterly shameless raving right in amerika can raise the spectre of ‘socialist medicine’ amongst a population where a broken arm or leg can cost one’s house. Even their sitcoms use fear of medical costs as a theme.