ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses nationalised medical services in England, USA, and some other countries. In England, as in America, voluntary hospitals have been generously provided in most towns of considerable size. Voluntary hospitals now commonly receive patients who can afford to contribute to the cost of their treatment, and schemes of voluntary insurance for hospital treatment when this becomes necessary are now fairly general. Insurance for medical care has been practised for many decades by private insurance, including Friendly Societies. The medical care of the American people can only be made satisfactory by calling in aid some form of obligatory insurance for sickness, or with or without this by following the example of Soviet Russia in providing medical care out of communal funds for all who need it. In all the larger countries a vast proportion of total medical care of the population is at the expense of the State directly, or is provided in part through compulsory systems of insurance.
