This essay will critically analyze Health care policies and the changes that took place between the 1940s to the present day, and how they dramatically altered the way in which health care was provided.

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LIBERAL REFORMS IN THE NHS, FROM BEVERIDGE TO BLAIR

This essay will critically analyze Health care policies and the changes that took place between the 1940s to the present day, and how they dramatically altered the way in which health care was provided. And whether the NHS did or even does offer the comprehensive service that it originally set out to provide. This essay will analyze through the lens of liberalism and how the kind of policies achieved within that socio-economical setting reflected in the health and health care area and their legacy to today’s NHS. What economical and political events made an intrinsically collectivist policy such as the reforms that took place after the Beveridge report be so drastically compromised by Margaret Thatcher.

The Beveridge report was an amazing piece of policy making, which represented the collectivism and paternalism typical of the post-war governmental ideology, and was set up to tackle the ‘Five Giant’, want, squalor, disease, idleness and ignorance. It consisted of three pillars, family allowances, full employment and comprehensive health care. (Beveridge, 1942) It represented a monumental shift in the approach that previous governments had in regards to health care, and set the stage for the formation of the welfare state as we know it today. Amongst other recommendations his ideas on how to set a socialized universal type of medicine went on to become the very basis on which the National Health Service was founded.

Based on economical recommendations of John Maynard Keynes whom was one of the founding fathers of the welfare state, the National Health Service was created in 1948.  Bevan who was also a major contributing founder of the welfare state, had as an ideal at the start (Baldock et al, 2005)of the NHS for it to be “a service that would be founded through taxation, reflecting  ability to pay, with an element of contribution through national insurance. Private practice would continue, but universalizing the best in the NHS would give people little incentive to pay privately”. (king’s fund 2005) The system was free at the point of use. It was a universal benefit that offered free access to health care to rich and poor alike. (Keynes) Marshall wrote in 1965, 'it is generally agreed that... the overall responsibility for the welfare of the citizens must remain with the state'(cited in the national achieve). Marshal’s ideal of health care was not to last, as shortly after founding the NHS prescription charges were introduced to those not receiving states benefits, bringing to an end its principle of universality.

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From then on a period of consensus followed which was only to be interrupted by various social and economical events that would influence the continuity of the political process.

In 1979 Margaret Thatcher was elected as prime minister representing the conservative party, this happened after a series of political events that discredited the labour party as well as economical events such as the oil crisis in 1974, increasing the effect of globalisation resulting in a reduced welfare management of individual countries within a global context and in the case of the NHS, a number of damaging strikes (Lewis, Gewirtz and ...

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