On this day sixty years ago Sylvia Beckingham was admitted to hospital for treatment. She was the first patient of the newly created National Health Service (NHS) in Britain, probably the greatest achievement of the post war Labour Government. It would not have been achieved without the drive and passion of one of the greatest welsh politicians of all time Aneurin Bevan. The heading of this blog is from his book In place of Fear.
He was former miner and man of ethical stature as can be seen from the principles for the NHS which he laid out at its foundation:
- Health should be free at the point of use
- Available to everyone who needed it
- Paid for out of general taxation
- It should be used responsibly
It seems to me that the provision of health and education to all citizens regardless of wealth and status is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for a society to call itself civilised. The economic benefit is also clear. The annual cost per head, per lifetime of the NHS was £200, todate it has risen to £1,700. To put that figure in perspective, when I quoted it to Larry Prusak earlier this week his comment was "that is what I pay a month for insurance"
Comments (2)
It seems to me that the provision of health and education to all citizens regardless of wealth and status is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for a society to call itself civilised. The economic benefit is also clear.
Hear, hear !
Great title for this post. I might amend it to "opposed to the hedonism of (late-stage) capitalism".
Posted by Jon Husband | July 5, 2008 7:38 PM
Posted on July 5, 2008 19:38
Does this sound like a contradiction or sensible?: in the provision of public goods, which happens in complex settings, efficiency is an outcome of focusing on resilience and effectiveness rather than the other way round. Be a bit logical, obviously there are bounds to the above, but one example i can think of is in South Africa there was a focus on cost recovery for water services (efficiency) and as a result many poor people got cholera and had to be treated at a cost far greater than it would have been to give them free water. Dave recently shared links to articles on how targets in policing (focus on efficiency) are leading to poor policing and increased crime...as another example to prove my case through pointing out the opposite of what I am claiming.... The problem with the provision of public goods is that it is sometimes impossible to capture true efficiency gains - e.g. had we provided free water we would never have known about the cholera so could not measure that efficiency gain.
Posted by Jonathan Carter | July 7, 2008 10:56 AM
Posted on July 7, 2008 10:56