We started off paying for the National Health Service via National Insurance Contributions in 1912. Lloyd George’s slogan – 9d for 4d – was only the first of many attempts to pass off National Insurance as a pain free alternative to taxation. The impression was created that by paying contributions people were building up a fund which would entitle them to future benefits. It was very successful, and many people still believe it, but in reality it was, and is, a giant Ponzi scheme. Today’s contributions pay for the benefits paid out now. “.. all the benefits in some sense […]
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Tag Archives: Lloyd George
Though most thoughtful and well-informed GPs now accept the need for more staff, equipment and postgraduate training, they are uncertain about what new investment is needed, and even more so about how it should be made. The only answer fully consistent with autonomy in the Osier paradigm would be that GPs should invest their own money as entrepreneurs, selling their services as commodities in an open market. In Britain, though not in many other developed countries, this had lost majority professional support by the 1920s and after 1948 its few remaining adherents became isolated. So long as the State was […]
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If positive answers to the defeatism of the Liberal Critique can only be found beyond the present limits of professionalism, we must look at what those limits are. Traditionally, the main task of doctors has been to respond to the complaints of individual patients suffering from disease, or fear of disease. The profession has always contained a minority, Public Health Medical Officers, Medical Officers of Health, Community Physicians, who are supposed to conserve health in populations rather than restore it in sick individuals; but they are at the periphery, and have not been encouraged or sometimes even allowed to combine […]
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