Word: nhs
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...overall there have been no fundamental alterations. The return to power of the Conservatives in 1951 did not result in the dismantling of the NHS, just as later Republican administrations did not undo the reforms of the New Deal...
...position is not one of claiming that the British NHS is a perfect institution. It suffers indeed both from problems and limitations. Yet aside from these. I believe that comprehensive health care can work successfully and, moreover, serves as a cornerstone in the more caring society which the welfare state was intended to create. At the risk of lapsing into platitudes, one can say that health is something where there is little justification for the provision of different standards of service for those with different bank balances...
Surely all citizens deserve the very best that the nation is able to provide. At the risk of simplifying things, it was this principle which was supposedly the overriding concern of the creators of the NHS... "that the physician should do his work without reference to the social, financial or racial position of the patient and that the necessary medical attention, preventive or curative, should be given without any question of fees arising...
...minister of health, Nye Bevan, was initially faced with opposition by 90 per cent of the British Medical Association. They even attempted to strike, but eventually this opposition disappeared due to a series of compromises. This included the continuation of a small private sector, which shares a great many NHS facilities, and supposedly maintains the notion of free choice...
Since 1948, when the NHS was first set up, there have been various changes in the system. One of the most significant was the introduction of a small charge for prescriptions including spectacles and dentures, which prompted Bevan and Harold Wilson to resign in 1951. Their gesture was largely symbolic, because the charges in question were comparatively small and anyway did not apply to the old, young, poor or unemployed...