English NHS

The National Health Service (NHS) is the publicly funded healthcare system in England, and one of the four National Health Service systems in the United Kingdom. It is the second largest single-payer healthcare system in the world after the Brazilian Sistema Único de Saúde. Primarily funded by the government from general taxation (plus a small amount from National Insurance contributions), and overseen by the Department of Health and Social Care, the NHS provides healthcare to all legal English residents and residents from other regions of the UK, with most services free at the point of use for most people. The NHS also conducts research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).

Free healthcare at the point of use comes from the core principles at the founding of the National Health Service. The 1942 Beveridge cross-party report established the principles of the NHS which was implemented by the Labour government in 1948. Labour's Minister for Health Aneurin Bevan is popularly considered the NHS' founder, despite never formally being referred to as such. In practice, "free at the point of use" normally means that anyone legitimately and fully registered with the system (i.e., in possession of an NHS number), available to legal UK residents regardless of nationality (but not non-resident British citizens), can access the full breadth of critical and non-critical medical care, without payment except for some specific NHS services, for example eye tests, dental care, prescriptions and aspects of long-term care. These charges are usually lower than equivalent services provided by a private provider and many are free to vulnerable or low-income patients.

The NHS provides the majority of healthcare in England, including primary care, in-patient care, long-term healthcare, ophthalmology and dentistry. The National Health Service Act 1946 came into effect on 5 July 1948. Private health care has continued parallel to the NHS, paid for largely by private insurance: it is used by about 8% of the population, generally as an add-on to NHS services.

The NHS is largely funded from general taxation, with a small amount being contributed by National Insurance payments and from fees levied in accordance with recent changes in the Immigration Act 2014. The UK government department responsible for the NHS is the Department of Health and Social Care, headed by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. The Department of Health and Social Care had a £110 billion budget in 2013–14, most of this being spent on the NHS.

History

A. J. Cronin's controversial novel ''The Citadel'', published in 1937, had fomented extensive debate about the severe inadequacies of healthcare. The author's innovative ideas were not only essential to the conception of the NHS, but in fact, his best-selling novels are said to have greatly contributed to the Labour Party's victory in 1945.

A national health service was one of the fundamental assumptions in the Beveridge Report. The Emergency Hospital Service established in 1939 gave a taste of what a National Health Service might look like.

Healthcare prior to the war had been an unsatisfactory mix of private, municipal and charity schemes. Bevan decided that the way forward was a national system rather than a system operated by local authorities. He proposed that each resident of the UK would be signed up to a specific General Practice (GP) as the point of entry into the system, building on the foundations laid in 1912 by the introduction of National Insurance and the list system for general practice. Patients would have access to all medical, dental and nursing care they needed without having to pay for it at the time.

In the 1980s, Thatcherism represented a systematic, decisive rejection and reversal of the post-war consensus, wherein the major political parties largely agreed on the central themes of Keynesianism, the welfare state, the mixed economy, supplies both of public and private housing, and close regulation of the economy. There was one major exception: the National Health Service, which was widely popular and had wide support inside the Conservative Party. In 1982, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher promised Britons that the NHS is "safe in our hands."

Organisation

The NHS was established within the differing nations of the United Kingdom through differing legislation, and such there has never been a singular British healthcare system, instead there are 4 health services in the United Kingdom; NHS England, the NHS Scotland, HSC Northern Ireland and NHS Wales, which were run by the respective UK government ministries for each home nation before falling under the control of devolved governments in 1999. In 2009, NHS England agreed to a formal NHS constitution, which sets out the legal rights and responsibilities of the NHS, its staff, and users of the service, and makes additional non-binding pledges regarding many key aspects of its operations.

The Health and Social Care Act 2012