Regarding pre-NHS health provison, try googling “Before Beveridge: Welfare Before the Welfare State ” – it’s a Civitas free publication but as they have revamped their website, I can’t locate it directly. It should answer your question in full.

There is a slew of free publications on the CIVITAS website dealing with healt provision before the NHS.

Link here:

http://www.civitas.org.uk/books/openAccess.php

There is plenty there regarding the NHS and the welfare state to keep you occupied for a while.Beware that they are not short documents.

The thing I like about Civitas is that the contributors are left wing liberals who have worked in the systems they describe and realised that they do not work. They can’t be accused of being biased.

Never forget that the free society did not die a natural death – the Prussian worshipping collectivists murdered freedom.

As part of my Malaysian residence visa, I am required to have health insurance, but this a sensible precaution anyway.

The annual cost of my medical insurance is 2,091.60 MYR (£427.51 / $675.04 US), including a 60% obesity weighting for being a fatty. This entitles me to healthcare which is on a par with the best US hospitals and way above the NHS in terms of cleanliness and quality.

I can attend my own GP within walking distance of my apartment (although given the heat, I prefer the motorcycle) or at any of 73 registered clinics on Penang island and many thousands throughout mainland Malaysia.

A friend of mine was diagnosed with a brain tumour, their was no question that all his medical treatment was covered. He saw a specialist the same day and targetted radiology was commenced two days later. It is now several months since his treatment and subsequent check-ups (he has an MRI every 6 weeks) have shown him to be cancer free.

It is possible that the same medical outcome could be achieved on the NHS, but not with the same speed or quality of care.

For this UK residents pay 30-50% of their income. It is only because we have propaganda organs such as the BBC continually spouting this bullshit as well as politicians who have their own private doctors and private hospitals all on expenses.

This is my fundamental problem with the BBC, too. Vast alternatives to it do not exist, and never have, because they have not been allowed to.

If you want a history of health care in the UK, I’d recommend James Bartholomew’s book, The Welfare State We’re In. It’s not perfect, insomuch as its main objective is to highlight the problems caused by the modern welfare state. However, it does have a lot of historical background about welfare provision, including caring for the sick, starting with the Poor Law of 1601.

This post leads me to the question: are there any good histories of the provision of health services in the UK before the NHS?

The main reason that reforming (let alone abolishing) the NHS is impossible, is that the myth that before the NHS (and even now in less enlightened countries without an NHS) it was impossible for anyone but the rich to get health care, and the old and infirm were callously left to die in the street, has entered the bones of the British people.

What would be great would be a short booklet outlining alternatives to the NHS, drawing examples from history and from other countries’ present to show that there *are* alternatives that don’t lead to death and disaster. British people cling to the NHS for the same reason the medieval peasants clung to the Catholic Church – because they have been taught by their masters that any alternative leads to hell and damnation; most people are literally incapable of imagining that any alternative could be better, so any argument for an alternative is ruled out before it is even put forward.

As for the NHS – the Conservative party has historically been terrified of touching it (no matter how many people it kills) because of the fear of being branded “lacking in compassion towards the poor and sick”.

But what about the BBC?

The BBC has been a leftist propaganda entity for decades – yet the Conservative party will not even get rid of the BBC tax (the “license fee”) for an organisation that throws buckets of human excrement over all nonleftists ever day.

Those whom the Gods wish to destroy they first make insane. And the continued support for the “license fee” is insane.

How can there be any real reform generally – when the BBC is pumping out collectivist propaganda 24 hours a day?

And, no, I do not accept the excuse “the Lib Dems will not let us do anything”.