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The Welfare State
Every British citizen who is employed (or self-employed) is obliged to pay a weekly contribution to the national insurance and health schemes. An employer also makes a contribution for each of his employees, and the Government too pays a certain amount. This plan was brought into being in 1948. Its aim is to prevent anyone from going without medical services, if he needs them, however poor he may be; to ensure that a person who is out of work shall receive a weekly sum of money to subsist on; and to provide a small pension for those who have reached the age of retirement. Everyone can register with a doctor of his choice and if he is ill he can consult the doctor without having to pay for the doctor’s service, although he has to pay a small charge for medicines. The doctor may, if necessary, send a patient to a specialist. or to hospital; in both cases treatment will be given without any fees being payable. Those who wish may become private patients, paying for their treatment, but they must still pay their contributions to the national insurance and health schemes. During illness the patient can draw a small amount every week, to make up for his wages. Everyone who needs to have his eyes seen to may go to a state-registered oculist and if his sight is weak he can get spectacles from an optician at a much reduced price. For a small payment he may go to a dentist; if he needs false teeth, he can obtain dentures for less than they would cost from a private dentist. When a man is out of work, he may draw unemployment benefit until he finds work again; this he will probably do by going to a Job Centre (an office run by the State to help people find jobs). If he is married, the allowance he receives will be larger. Obviously the amount paid is comparatively small, for the State does not want people to stop working in order to draw a handsome sum of money for doing nothing! When a man reaches the age of sixty-five, he may retire from work and then he has the right to draw a State pension. For women, the age of retirement is sixty. Mothers-to-be and children receive special benefits such as free milk or certain foodstuffs for which only a minimum charge is made. The State pays to the mother a small weekly sum for each child in a family. There is also an allowance for funeral, for the State boasts that it looks after people "from cradle to grave"! There are special benefits for certain people, such as the blind and the handicapped. The amount of money needed to operate these schemes is enormous and a large part of the money comes not from the contributions but from taxation. It is this social insurance scheme, together with the Government’s determination to see that there is full employment (or as near as can be), that constitutes what we can call the "Welfare State".

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