ABSTRACT
The immediate aim of sickness insurance is to ensure maintenance and help in sickness. Sickness insurance had a firm hold on English workingmen before 1911, when the first National Insurance Act was passed. The system was taken advantage of by persons who ought not to have exploited an inadequate medical payment; while this underpaid work tended to be scamped. The ministry of health has a staff of 59 medical officers for England and Wales, organised on a territorial basis, who have important duties in controlling the certification of sickness. The local insurance committee must confer under certain circumstances with three other local committees. In each area the local doctors elect a local medical committee, representing ail the practitioners in the area, and the insurance committee are expected to consult this committee on general questions affecting the administration of medical benefit. The medical certification of incapacity for work is the pivot on which the whole of sickness insurance revolves.
