The extent of and the nature of health provision between 1918 and 1945

Question 1

What healthcare was provided before 1918?

Answer 1

1911: National Health Insurance for low paid employees earning under £160 per year (unemployed and families were excluded)

Question 2

What were the Poor Laws?

Answer 2

Poor Law provided for some degree of medical care with Poor Law Hospitals.

Question 3

What did workhouses provide?

Answer 3

Workhouses often had their own infirmaries and many of them converted completely into hospitals once their original use had become obsolete.

Question 4

What the healthcare context in the interwar years?

Answer 4

• Important medical advances had been made during the C19th.
• There was the assumption that medical science would grow, which would lead to better health care
• Treatment for serious illnesses was mainly palliative, and focussed on making the patient as comfortable as possible.

Question 5

What was the healthcare consensus in the interwar years?

Answer 5

The government should:
- Invest in research
- Invest in medical training
- Organise a national network of hospitals
- Play a role in rationing healthcare

Question 6

When was the Ministry of Health created?

Answer 6

1919

Question 7

What did the Ministry of Health do?

Answer 7

• Responsible for coordinating health at a regional level.
• Administered funds raised through the national health insurance scheme.
• Christopher Addison, the first ever minister for health, had been heavily involved in organising medical services during WW1.

Question 8

What was the fight against tuberculosis?

Answer 8

Before the war the government had created TB sanatoria to slow the spread of disease.

Question 9

Who took charge in the fight against tuberculosis?

Answer 9

The Medical Research Committee worked to research the causes of TB, and its findings were totally independent of the government.

Question 10

What did the government do to fight against TB?

Answer 10

• Tuberculosis Act (1921) made the provision of TB sanatoria by local authorities compulsory
• This resulted in a decline in the number of cases every year between 1920-1938.

Question 11

When was the Local Government Act?

Answer 11

1920

Question 12

What did the Local Government Act 1920 do?

Answer 12

• Passed responsibility for Poor Law hospitals to county and borough councils.
• Allowed councils to convert Poor Law infirmaries into public hospitals.
• Local authorities given authority over other aspects of public health (venereal disease clinics, child welfare, dentistry, school meals and medical services).

Question 13

What was the result of the Local Government Act 1920?

Answer 13

• Led to the reorganisation of healthcare on a regional basis.
• Created a single health authority that coordinated health care in each county or borough.
• It enabled local authorities to provide medical services to the entire population of the area but didn’t lead to cheap, modern health care for all.