Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Battle for Health: A Political History of the Socialist Medical Association, 1930-51

The Battle for Health: A Political History of the Socialist Medical Association, 1930-51

Stewart, John

Paperback

Series: Routledge Revivals

Medical ReferenceGeneral World History

ISBN10: 1138350427
ISBN13: 9781138350427
Publisher: Routledge
Published: Feb 12 2020
Pages: 268
Weight: 0.90
Height: 0.60 Width: 6.10 Depth: 9.10
Language: English

First published in 1999, this is the first scholarly study of the Socialist Medical Association (SMA), an organisation of left-wing medical practitioners founded in 1930 and affiliated to the Labour Party in the following year. The SMA's aim was a free, comprehensive, and universal state medical service, democratically controlled and with all personnel, including doctors, working as salaried employees. In the 1930s and early 1940s the organisation gained increasing influence over Labour Party health policy, and consequently saw its activities as central to the creation of the National Health Service (NHS). However, once Labour was actually in power, the SMA became more and more marginalised, in part because of its difficult relationship with the Minister of Health, Aneurin Bevan. Bevan, while inaugurating a service which had many features desired by the Association, none the less also felt obliged to make compromises with the medical profession. The SMA's activities are therefore of historical interest in providing a further view of the creation of the NHS, while its ideas and proposals continue to raise serious questions about issues such as the nature and control of social welfare and the possibility of achieving a truly socialised health service.

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