History of the National Health Service He established the State Medical Service Association which held its first meeting in 1912 and continued to exist until it was replaced by the Socialist Medical Association in 1930. Before the National Health Service was created in 1948, patients were generally required to pay for their health care. Free treatment was sometimes available from Voluntary Hospitals. Some local authorities operated hospitals for local ratepayers (under a system originating with the Poor Law). The London County Council (LCC) on 1 April 1930 took over from the abolished Metropolitan Asylums Board responsibility for 140 hospitals, medical schools and other medical institutions. 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