The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away

[life on mars]

No it wasn't.

The reasoning behind the formation of the NHS - and to slay the "five giants" identified by Beveridge (want, disease, squalor, ignorance, idleness) - was based on idealism and disgust at the way the private health system worked. It wasn't the result of cynicism and chasing a more efficient way of exploiting labour.

There was also an opportunity that wasn't there before the Second World War:

- The emergence of a view that health care was a right, not something bestowed erratically by charity
- Bipartisan agreement that the existing services were in a mess and had to be sorted out
- Financial difficulties for the voluntary hospitals
- The Second World War that ensured the creation of an emergency medical service as part of the war effort
- The cataclysmic effects of the war that made it possible to have a massive change of system, rather than incremental modification
- An increasing view among the younger members of the medical profession that there was a better way of doing things

And a small contribution by A J Cronin through his very influential novel The Citadel - about a doctor in a small Welsh mining village - that exposed the evils of private health care to those who had never experienced it in poverty.

Let's be bluntly honest we cannot afford it , its the fifth largest organisation in the world, that should stimulate thoughts of how difficult that is to fund from the public purse , never mind the drugs, equipment, building estates costs.
Madness , we have moved on from Beveridge / Bevan , I'd like to hear thier viewpoint now.

[the other bob wilson]

Let's be bluntly honest we cannot afford it , its the fifth largest organisation in the world, that should stimulate thoughts of how difficult that is to fund from the public purse , never mind the drugs, equipment, building estates costs.
Madness , we have moved on from Beveridge / Bevan , I'd like to hear thier viewpoint now.

Jon was dealing with, very well I thought, a sweeping generalisation from Feedback about what and why the NHS was set up for.

You're right in saying that the NHS offers a much different, and more difficult, set of challenges than it did in Beveridge and Bevan's day, but I'd like to think that both gentleman would be able to offer more than "oh, it's too expensive, so let's wrap the whole thing up and let the private sector deal with it" if they were around now. For a start, one of them may think what has become the unthinkable in this day and age and propose that the taxes we pay should go up a bit to help finance what I for one still think of as a national treasure.

[Pearcey3]

Yep Jon eloquently dealt with Mr Feedback. It hss taken me too long to notice Feedback had returned.