HIST 249 Chapter Notes - Chapter Reading: Voluntary Hospital
21 Nov 2018
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Most doctors have assumed that a patient satisfactorily helped within the context of a fee to service transaction represented their aspirations. The practice of medicine was the way a doctor to actually make their living. In the nineteenth century new forms of paying for health care merged or older forms changed their character. There are four principal kinds of economic relationship between doctor and patient. Prepayment through mutual aid associations or private insurance. Payment regulated by local or central government through taxes, social security contributions or a combination of the two. Fee for service or charity accounted for the most medical encounters throughout the 19th century. Individuals who were comfortably off paid for the medical care whenever they needed it. Most doctors devoted some time to charity by either seeing patients for free or charging only what a patient could afford or worked within a charity hospital, dispensary or infirmary.
