Abstract
Health affects every aspect of life, and it not surprising that health care is a major focus for social concern. Governments have been aware of the importance of the population's access to health care for a very long time and began to intervene in this sense even before 1900, in helping the poor people. However, the true first step in the state's intervention in health care occurred after the end of the second Boer War, in 1911, with the Health Insurance Act. It was a first step, but some important problems in the functioning of the system, as for example the difficulties of the middle classes to access to care, made changes necessary. Among the first part of the twentieth century, some others steps had been taken towards the building of a National Health Service (N.H.S.). In this, the Beveridge report of 1942 has been particularly important. We have had to wait until the end of the Second World War to assist to the creation of the N.H.S., with the "National Service Act" of 1946.
