Health Services financing report: a review of appendices A-Q

In May of this year after three years' work an advisory panel of the B.M.A., with Dr. I. M. Jones in the chair, produced a report on Health Services Financing.(1) A summary appeared in the Annual Report of Council(2) and a preliminary discussion on the report was held at the B.M.A.'s Annual Representative Meeting in July.(3) A full debate was deferred until the committees, divisions, and branches of the Association had had an opportunity to discuss the proposals. Nearly half of the book consists of appendices, commissioned from several economists, which cover the N.H.S. and the health services of 14 Western and some Eastern European countries. Below Professor Dennis Lees reviews these appendices, which formed a major source of information for the authors of the report and therefore have an important bearing on their conclusions.