ABSTRACT
Socialist Medical Association (SMA) literature often used illustrative diagrams to show just how complex the system was, and how different members of the same family could find themselves having to seek out different forms of care depending on, for example, their age or economic status. The main point, however, is that on taking up his ministerial post Bevan did not feel obliged to take particular heed of the SMA, despite its important contribution to Labour Party health policy up until 1945; and that this was something which, unsurprisingly, the Association increasingly saw as a flaw in the Minister's strategy. The National Health Service (NHS) as set up by Bevan provided comprehensive and universal medical care, free at the point of consumption. This is therefore an appropriate point to examine in more detail the Association's critique of Bevan's NHS, and we use as a starting point a 1946 pamphlet written by Stephen Taylor.
