"Society becomes more wholesome, more serene, and spiritually healthier, if it knows that its citizens have at the back of their consciousness the knowledge that not only themselves, but all their fellows, have access, when ill, to the best that medical skill can provide. It was inevitable that a Health Service of this ambitious character should have to face considerable difficulties in the early stages... But more important than the financial difficulties is the principle which the Health Service has now firmly established -- that the resources of medical skill and the apparatus of healing shall be placed at the disposal of the patient without charge when he or she needs them."

Aneurin Bevan, In Place of Fear, published 1952. Bevan was Minister of Health 1945-51 and the architect of the National Health Service, which came into operation on 5 July 1948.