Suchergebnisse

This article first explains why the London County Council (LCC) was, by the 1930s, the largest provider of hospital beds in Britain. It then examines contemporary perceptions of the LCC hospital service showing how the complex series of responses to it fed into debates about the nature of the post-war National Health Service. Finally, an assessment is made of the service's place in the history of the health services.

A review essay on a book by H. George Fredericksen & John Nalbandian (Eds), The Future of Local Government Administration (International City-County Management Assoc, 2002).

The British National Health Service (NHS) was created shortly after the end of World War II and formally came into being on its "Appointed Day" in July 1948. The NHS has been seen as the crowning achievement of the postwar Labour government's "welfare state" by both the general public and academic commentators. As Rodney Lowe points out, by the late 1940s opinion polls showed it to be by far the best-received part of Labour's social policies; and in popular perceptions the terms "NHS" and "welfare state" were often viewed as synonymous. Lowe himself, while carefully noting the problems that attended the birth of the health service, nonetheless sees it as an "idealistic" institution and remarks that in no other Western country, not even social democratic Sweden, "were the whole population and the full range of medical need (Beveridge's principles of universalism and comprehensiveness) so quickly realized by afreeservice." Another respected commentator, Rudolf Klein, similarly highlights the exceptionally wide-ranging remit of the NHS, claiming it as a "unique experiment in social engineering."