Minister Outlines Britain's Health Scheme

Chronicle (Levin), 8 October 1949, Page 5

Minister Outlines Britain's Health Scheme

LONDON, Oct. 6. More than 41,000,000 people^ or 95 per cent of the population, had joined the National Health Service, stated the Minister of Health (Mr Aneurin Bevan) today. He. said the general practitioners in service totalled about 19,000 out of about 21,000, and the number of chenxists was 14,000 — practieally all the chemists in the country. Mr Bevan said that in the first year of the service, 187,000,000 prescriptions were dispensed, and 5,125,000 pairs of spectacles had been supplied. There were 3,000,000 pairs still on order. 'A total of 9400 dentists had joined the service. • "Like every other - great experiment not everything is absolutely right.. There also have been certain abuses. However, the' first year of the health service has been remarkably good eonsidering everything," said Mr Bevan. He added that only a few cases of unreasonable conduet had come to notice. 1 ' When eharges of .abuse are made it must be remembered they are not ' made against the administration, but against some professjonal person who may have succumbed to the importunities of the patient. The chiet offenders Kave been dentists and doetofs, but the cases are few and far between wheu one eonsiders the vast volume of work done by the genera: practitioner. " Mr Bevan eontinued: "There has never been the ft&holesale direction of doetors about which so much was heard in the early days of the National Health Seheroe." He said that evvry.liou3ehold should be equipped with such things as aspirin and cottou wool, and it should not be neeessary to rusJi doetors when these sorts of things were needed. Many people assumed that frhe total cost of the health service was an indi cation o£ an additional burden . tlu. Government had to put on the community, but' that was not the case. There were no means of knowing what was spent by the citizen on his own account before the service started, but one guess put it at £250,000,000 a year.