1st Edition
Financing Medicine The British Experience Since 1750
Financing Medicine brings together a collection of essays dealing with the financing of medical care in Britain since the mid-eighteenth century, with a view to addressing two major issues:
- Why did the funding of the British health system develop in the way it did?
- What were the ramifications of these arrangements for the nature and extent of health care before the NHS?
The book also goes on to explore the 'lessons' and legacies of the past which bear upon developments under the NHS.
The contributors to this volume provide a sustained and detailed examination of the model of health care which preceded the NHS - an organization whose distinctive features hold such fascination for the scholars of health systems - and their insights illuminate current debates on the future of the NHS.
For students and scholars of the history of medicine, this will prove essential reading.
1. Introduction Martin Gorsky & Sally Sheard. Section 1 Voluntary funding and the growth of hospital care. 2. The price of charity to the Middlesex Hospital, 1750-1830 Bronwyn Croxson. 3. Charitable bodies: the funding of Birmingham’s voluntary hospitals in the nineteenth century Jonathan Reinarz. 4. Regional comparators in the funding and organisation of the voluntary hospital system, c.1860-1939 Steven Cherry. 5. 'The Caprice of Charity': geographical variations in the finances of British voluntary hospital services before the NHS John Mohan. Section 2 Local government and medical institutions. 6. Paying for the Sick Poor: Financing Medicine under the Victorian Poor Law, the case of the Whitechapel Union, 1850-1900 Keir Waddington. 7. Reluctant providers? The politics and ideology of municipal hospital finance 1870-1914 Sally Sheard. 8. The Bradford Municipal Hospital experiment of 1920: the emergence of the mixed economy in hospital provision in inter-war Britain Tim Willis. Section 3 Domiciliary care and health insurance. 9. Friendly society health insurance in nineteenth-century England. Martin Gorsky. 10. 'Strong combination': the Edwardian BMA and contract practice Andrew Morrice. 11. The economic and medical significance of the British National Insurance Act, 1911 Anne Digby. Section 4 Contemporary issues. 12. Financing health care in Britain since 1939 Rodney Lowe. 3. A double irony? The politics of National Health Service expenditure in the 1950s Tony Cutler. 14. Inequalities, regions and hospitals: the Resource Allocation Working Party John Welshman
Biography
Martin Gorsky is Senior Lecturer in the Contemporary History of Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He most recently co-authored Mutualism and Health Care: hospital contributory schemes in twentieth century Britain. Sally Sheard is Senior Lecturer in History of Medicine at the University of Liverpool. She co-edited Body and City: histories of urban public health. Her most recent co-authored book is The Nation’s Doctor: the role of the Chief Medical Officer, 1855–1998.
