Call for shake up in NHS funding: Nye Bevan's view on national and private insurance

doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7547.973-a

BMJ 2006;332:973 (22 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7547.973-a

Letter

Call for shake up in NHS funding

Nye Bevan's view on national and private insurance

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—In response to Hart (previous letter), perhapsthe 900 doctors are more interested in meeting the needs ofthe insured few, and not everyone? In his most readable paperthe far-sighted Nye Bevan rejected national insurance and privateinsurance thus:

When I was engaged in formulating the main principles of theBritish Health Service, I had to give careful study to variousproposals for financing it, and as this aspect of the schemeis a matter of anxious discussion in many other parts of theworld, it may be useful if I set down the main considerationsthat guided my choice. In the first place, what was to be itsfinancial relationship with national insurance; should the healthservice be on an insurance basis? I decided against this. Ithad always seemed to me that a personal contributory basis waspeculiarly inappropriate to a national health service. There. . . [Full text of this article]