British and American Ecnomic Systems

Within this general underlying similarity, however, the British and American economic systems had some striking differences, particularly in the half-century after the Second World War. In Britain a number of failing industries were nationalized after the war, and remained nationalized for over a generation. While the United States had a few examples of public industrial enterprise, such as the New-Deal era Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) electrical power utility, such operations never gained the general acceptance in the United States that they had in Britain.

In no sector, perhaps, was the disparity between the two system greater than in health care. The British system was almost purely public, "socialized medicine," while the American system remained almost entirely private in the first postwar decade

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In the face of general economic strain, and a highly self-conscious working class newly accustomed to free health care, physicians' and conservatives' lobbying pressure for a restoration of the older order was overriden. The National Health Service (NHS) was formally established in 1946, and soon became rooted as an established feature in British life. In contrast to the British experience, the wartime transformation of American medicine was far more limited, and nearly inadvertent. The strains of war revitalized the American economy (which had only partially recovered from the Great Depression), rather than overstressing it, and no bombs were sending floods of wounded civilians into American hospitals. Large numbers of doctors were drafted for wartime medical service, but direct official intervention in American health care was minimal. The wartime government did, however, impose wage freezes on American industry. With war production at unprecedented levels, and large numbers of workers drafted into the military, the competitive pressure among firms to recruit workers was intense -- and in the face of wage freezes, they could not meet this pressure simply by offering higher wages. Instead they resorted to a sort of looph
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2957
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)