ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the nature of the consensus that had emerged by 1939: the movement of ideas which made it seem inevitable that some kind of national health services (NHS) would eventually evolve–dictated, by the logic of circumstances, rather than by the ideology of politicians or the demands of pressure groups. Labour Ministers continued to grumble to the last during the sessions of the Reconstruction Committee involved in the final drafting of the White Paper about conceding the right to private practice for general practitioners in the public service. The politics of the medical profession, as distinct from the politics of health care, would require a study in their own right to do them anything like justice. Britain’s NHS came into existence on 5 July 1948. It was the first health system in any Western society to offer free medical care to the entire population.
