20 June 2018 — 0314 mdt
The fundamental premise of the Beveridge Report
In November, 1942, Russia was fighting the Battle of Stalingrad, and the Allies, commanded by Eisenhower, were in Northwest Africa, beginning to push back the Afrika Korps. And in London, 63-year-old William Beveridge, the Master of University College, Oxford, doing wartime service chairing the committee on social insurance and allied services, released the Report to the Parliament on Social Insurance and Allied Services, popularly known as the Beveridge Report, that laid the foundation for the United Kingdom’s single-payer National Health Service.
Beveridge’s belief that “Restoration of a sick person to health is a duty of the State…” was widely accepted and supported, although action was deferred until the war was won.
Seventy-six years later, Americans still do not agree that health care is a right, nor do they agree that restoring a sick person to health is a duty of the state. Even the Montana Democratic Party’s platform is missing a “Healthcare is a right” plank. In a little over three weeks, the MDP will meet to consider improving its platform. As delegates to the platform convention consider proposals to add a “Healthcare is a right” plank, they may wish to consider Beveridge’s words of wisdom three quarters of a century ago:
427. The first part of Assumption B is that a comprehensive national health service will ensure that for every citizen there is available whatever medical treatment he requires, in whatever form he requires it, domiciliary or institutional, general, specialist or consultant, and will ensure also the provision of dental, ophthalmic and surgical appliances, nursing and midwifery and rehabilitation after accidents. Whether or not payment towards the cost of the health service is included in the social insurance contribution, the service itself should
(i) be organised, not by the Ministry concerned with social insurance, but by Departments responsible for the health of the people and for positive and preventive as well as curative measures;
(ii) be provided where needed without contribution conditions in any individual case.
Restoration of a sick person to health is a duty of the State and the sick person, prior to any other consideration. The assumption made here is in accord with the definition of the objects of medical service as proposed in the Draft Interim Report of the Medical Planning Commission of the British Medical Association:
(a) to provide a system of medical service directed towards the achievement of positive health, of the prevention of disease, and the relief of sickness;
(b) to render available to every individual all necessary medical services, both general and specialist, and both domiciliary and institutional.