National Health Service National Health Service The National Health Service (NHS) is the name used for each of the public health services in the United Kingdom – the NHS in England, NHS Scotland, NHS Wales, and the affiliated Health and Social Care (HSC) in Northern Ireland – as well as a term to describe them collectively. They were established together in 1948 as one of the major social reforms following the Second World War. The founding principles were that services should be comprehensive, universal and free at the point of delivery. Each service provides a comprehensive range of health services, free at the
National Health Service (England) published in 1937, had fomented extensive debate about the severe inadequacies of healthcare. The author's innovative ideas were not only essential to the conception of the NHS, but in fact, his best-selling novels are said to have greatly contributed to the Labour Party's victory in 1945. A national health service was one of the fundamental assumptions in the Beveridge Report. The Emergency Hospital Service established in 1939 gave a taste of what a National Health Service might look like. Healthcare prior to the war had been an unsatisfactory mix of private, municipal and charity schemes. Bevan decided that the way