“financial anxiety in time of sickness is a serious hindrance to recovery, apart from its unnecessary cruelty.”

Nye Bevan, ‘In Place of Fear’

If you haven’t read it already, put this top of your lockdown reading list. Super relevant. https://www.sochealth.co.uk/national-health-service/the-sma-and-the-foundation-of-the-national-health-service-dr-leslie-hilliard-1980/aneurin-bevan-and-the-foundation-of-the-nhs/in-place-of-fear-a-free-health-service-1952/

On contagious diseases & innovation in medical treatment & the profit motive:

Bevan on why occupational health insurance isn’t the answer and we need a universal service (and I’d argue, same thing applies to having a decent benefits safety net for all, not just a reliance on occupational sick pay). Jack Jones said the same thing to me about pensions.

Bevan on why voluntarism is no substitute for properly funded state services.

Bevan on why health should not be dependent on having paid a particular level of “contributions”, nor on a hypothecated tax.

Bevan on why charging migrants for NHS use is a terrible idea

Bevan on the politics of migration & the NHS...

Bevan on the folly of blaming patients for “excessive” NHS use and “bottomless pit” arguments (and why Churchill was wrong)

Bevan on how the NHS could help develop manufacturing of medical items & gain efficiencies thru centralised procurement of equipment (sadly subsequent governments neglected the former, & more recently, significantly fragmented & privatised the latter)

Bevan on why “pay beds” (private wards in NHS hospitals) should end (instead the 2012 Act allowed for their significant expansion, & cuts drove hospitals down this line). They’re now in NHS use, and mustn’t return to being “pay beds” after the crisis.

Bevan on how the ideological opponents of universal public healthcare never give up (but neither do we)

Bevan wrote all of this in the 1950s. But the issues he discussed remain startlingly similar. I’ll end on this