ABSTRACT
Perhaps more important than Labour policy, as articulated at this time in the formation of the future National Health Service, was the experience of the doctors, the consultants in particular, during the Second World War. Lloyd George had several objectives which he wished to achieve through the National Health Insurance Act of 1911. In February the British Medical Association formed a State Sickness Insurance Committee, to which it entrusted the task of drawing up detailed proposals for submission to the insurance commissioners. To a great extent the income and social position of the general practitioner after 1911 depended upon the success of the approved societies, which were the lynchpin of the national health insurance scheme. The greater security and improved incomes deriving from the national health insurance scheme was the basis for the contemporary feeling that 'a better class of man' was being attracted into general practice.
