Introduction

National Health Service (NHS) establishes the pursuit of a more equitable allocation of health care resources. Health care equity issues had not been resolved by the growing state intervention in health care before the NHS. For the NHS, one writer coined the label the inverse care law to indicate the persistence of a situation in which the availability of good medical care tends to vary inversely with the need of the population served. The traditionally well-endowed areas such as central London maintained their position within the NHS, with the Plan doing little to redress the imbalance of resources between central London, the Home Counties and the rest of the country. The history of health services from the establishment of NHI in 1913 until the establishment of the NHS in 1948 was one of state financed and regulated medical care being supplied to limited, clearly designated groups of the population.