The Political Economy of the British National Health Service, 1945--1975: Opportunities and Constraints? (2008)
Stewart, John (Author)
Medical History
Volume: 52
Pages: 453--470
Edition Details: Part of a special issue: “The Era of Biomedicine: Science, Medicine, and Public Health in Britain and France after the Second World War”
Language: English
The purpose of this essay is to set the scene for the other pieces in this collection by looking first at the opportunities afforded by the creation of the National Health Service; and, second and in rather more detail, at the constraints upon it. This is not to decry the service's undoubted achievements. Rather, it is to argue that as a result of factors both intended and unintended brakes have been put on the development of the kind of unified health service, dedicated to preventive and social medicine, that reformers have envisaged since the beginning of the twentieth century. The achievements of the NHS notwithstanding, there is a large measure of truth in the observations of some early critics who argued that what was created was not a national health service at all. Instead, it was a national hospital or a national sickness service---that is one which focused largely on hospital and curative medicine, and did little actively to promote health.4 In consequence, overlapping or related areas such as public health, preventive medicine, and social medicine were relatively neglected.5
...MoreArticle Quirke, Viviane; Gaudillière, Jean-Paul (2008) The Era of Biomedicine: Science, Medicine, and Public Health in Britain and France after the Second World War. Medical History (p. 441).
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