Politics and Policy 1914-39

The meaning of payment

“…103 Despite such criticisms, Lloyd George's judgement was that using insurance as the premise for his scheme made it socially acceptable and paying insurance came to be treated as any other household expense. 104 A Ministry of Labour inquiry found that the combined payments of state and voluntary insurance accounted for over 5 per cent of expenditure in the average working-class household in 1937-38 (see table 5.2). That on state insurance was 2s 0¾d, while that on voluntary insurance higher still at 2s 4½d, and an additional 1s 8d was spent on 'medical fees, drugs and hospitals' .…”

“…Lloyd George had an amendment inserted into the 1911 Bill stating 'that medical treatment shall be given without regard to cause or nature of disease', which Derek Fraser used as evidence that he and Churchill 'saw no place in insurance for the concept of the undeserving poor', but instead saw 'universal entitlement earned by contribution' . 106 Likewise, there was no notion of an undeserving contributory scheme member, but that is not to say they operated on the same insurance principle. Payment, either directly by the patient or indirectly via a contributory scheme, was in effect an act of good citizenship rather than earning the right to treatment.…”