He then proceeds to advocate an urgent need of the profession, viz: the establishment of an adequate number of auxiliary hospitals throughout the country, staffed by teams of general practitioners, to which all practitioners can have access, and to which they can send cases requiring clinical observation of any kind, rest or treatment that cannot be carried out in the sick person’s home. (_British Medical Journal_, July 19, 19.) Dr. Howarth, Medical Officer of Health of the City of London, and Dr. B. A. Richmond, Secretary of the London Panel Committee, affirm “the limitation of medical benefit to insured persons alone cannot continue. Another service has been added to the many competing classes of state treatment”; and they bring out the fact that personal contributions of insured persons are swallowed up in supplying the sickness and disablement benefit, and contribute nothing to the cost of the sanatorium benefit, maternity benefit, or medical benefit. Dr. H. S. Beadles, Secretary of the Stratford & West Ham Panel Committee, says: “The British Medical Association should fearlessly acknowledge that the attendance under the National Insurance Act, which is itself a part-time State service, is an absolute failure and amounts to little more than first aid, carried on at an enormous cost.” CHAPTER IV INSURANCE AND HEALTH[11] So far as a majority of the population are concerned, it is necessary to realize that they are never far removed from the line dividing destitution from adequacy, using the word destitution to mean insufficiency or lack of some provision essential for health and continued welfare. It may be urged that this is owing in large measure to the improvidence or thriftlessness of the wage-earners who are chiefly concerned; but such a statement fails to appreciate the higher standard of conduct and the greater self-denial which is demanded from weekly wage-earners than from ourselves, if out of their wages provision is to be made for a “rainy day,” without affecting unfavourably the present health of the worker or his family. The general appreciation of the above considerations has led to the provision of non-contributory old-age pensions in the United Kingdom; and similar sentiments have led in many countries to compensation for accidents at the expense of employers; and to the various national systems of insurance against sickness. With the principle of sickness insurance there can be no quarrel. It is the substitution of coöperative for individual provision, thereby distributing some of the loss and eliminating some of the risk of suffering from illness. The value of any system of sickness insurance, however, must necessarily be judged by several criteria. _Criteria of Value of Insurance_