The British National Health Service (NHS) And Its Enlightenment

Britain pioneered the introducing and reforming of the National Health Service system in the world as well as among western countries even including such advanced countries as the U.S., Germany and France, etc. So far it has weathered over half a century's development since the announcement of the Beveridge Report in 1948.This thesis explores the main issues related to NHS's evolving into a comparatively more mature health care system throughout the history. It first reviews the political environment of the establishment of this system, including the introduction of the Beveridge Report and the forging of the first Welfare State.Then comes the development of the NHS. This part mainly involves the prime period of this system, 60s and 70s, during which time the General Practice gained the acceptance in the U.K., the stage of the early 90s when the Thatcher-Major government introduced the Internal Market into the NHS, thus turning the public service organization into the NHS Trust and the last period under the leadership of Tony Blair, whose reform has been aiming at putting patients and people at the heart of the health service.In addition, this thesis tries to single out the features and the outcomes of the NHS reforms, with the purpose of drawing lessons from these reforms for China's ongoing health service reforms by assessing their merits and demerits.This thesis finally discusses the effective enlightenment on the reform of China's public health service system by way of summarizing the achievements and drawbacks of the British NHS.