Justice, welfare and health care

Miss Telfer offers a new analysis, classifying health care into four systems, only one of which, the "laissez-faire" type, is unlikely to be acceptable today. The other three systems are defined here as "liberal humanitarian", "liberal socialist" and "pure socialist." Each is analysed for its content and for the views of its protagonists and antagonists. On these issues no dogma is proclaimed as the author says she has sought to "bring out some of the principles at issue in any discussion of the rights and wrongs of socialized medicine". This journal is surely the proper place for such a discussion as the worlds of the politician, of the economist, of the doctor and of the patient come to a point in the philosophies behind the aspect of medical ethics exemplified in the provision of medical services by the state. Miss Telfer also glances down the byways of the medicine of the market place.