ABSTRACT
An advanced industrial society has, as an aspect of its complexity, a technologically impressive and scientifically profound system of health care. In the United Kingdom this is identified with the state, and we call it a national health service. Altogether there is an investment— economic and humanitarian— commensurate with the resources of a society that is, relative to its own history and the rest of the contemporary world, wealthy. It is possible to argue that this is a sick society and that health care resources have to run ahead of themselves in order to stay still. Or that the resources are wrongly directed, treating the symptoms and never the cause. Health systems are inevitably subject to societal dynamics. National insurance was introduced, followed, after the First World War, by the establishment of the first Ministry of Health in a British government. The Labour Government elected after the Second World War introduced the National Health Service.
