The National Health Service

Abstract

The establishment of a National Health Service (NHS) without service-user charges and with the twin goals of minimising inequalities in health and maximising access to health care is understandably associated with the socialist aspirations of the immediate post-war Labour government. However, it has long been argued that a key motivating factor was the less ideological, more technical goal of an efficiently managed health care system (Eckstein, 1958). Although the terminology may have changed, there is therefore a case for seeing a consistency in discussions concerning the management of health services in Britain.