National Health Service Act 1946 and Cuba: My Revolution

The National Health Reform Act of 1949 was the post-war move towards establishing a health service for everyone in the UK. It substituted the National Health Service (NHS), which offers the facility to the public without charge, as a policy based on equity and liberalism. Similarly, the graphic novel Cuba: My Revolution reflects life during the Revolutionary War in Cuba, where social justice and healthcare for all were considered basic revolutionary rights. By exploring Che Guevara’s radio broadcasts and focusing on his visions of a society that has to have medical care in-take as one of the rights, this story map compares how the 1949 reforms and Guevara’s ideas of revolution meet in the concept of providing free and adequately medical assistance to all citizens.

The National Health Reform Act 1949 paved the way by defining healthcare as a public duty. It is in response to the health crises featured in the early 20th Century, including the Spanish flu (See Project 1), hence the need for adequate facilities to facilitate health. After the war, the NHS intended to establish a stable structure of healthcare not as a luxury good but as a right for the citizens; thus, post-war Britain was charismatic, a socialist idea in a sense, designed to focus on the improvement of the society rather than the generation of revenues (Neiman et al., 2021). The above approach to health reform is an example of a systematically planned and government-driven approach to enhancing health, and that can be viewed as a part of state stability functions. That is why such principles are heard organically in the context of revolutionary values when access to healthcare represents liberation from tyranny and discrimination (McIntyre & Song, 2019).

In his speeches during the Cuban Revolution, Che Guevara advocated health liberation as one of the many themes. According to Guevara, for a given society to deserve its liberties and the resultant independence, it was supposed to ensure that all the basic needs, such as health and education, were met. In Cuba: My Revolution, the protagonist's experience describes how health care becomes both a revolutionary right and a need. In Guevara’s own words, in his radio broadcasts, social services were a part of a liberation process, as it was the basis of the 1949 reforms that viewed healthcare as a societal right. (Orszag, 2016).

While the health reforms of 1949 created a stable structure of the NHS, revolutionary Cuba struggled to ensure the constant quality of healthcare services. Cuba: My Revolution depicts these challenges from the point of view of the main character, showing that political instabilities and resource scarcities negatively impacted welfare in health care. However, the novel shows that Guevara fails to acknowledge some realities of maintaining health care when one has limited power and material and when two powerful forces pressure the system to conform. This gap between revolutionary ideals and the practical realities of implementation reflects a core issue in healthcare literature: equity also depends on well-developed systems and the funding necessary to support these systems properly (Neiman et al., 2021).

 To Guevara's political revolutionary approach, healthcare delivery was described as an important state responsibility as it stems from human dignity and freedom from imperialism disposition. This ideology corresponds to the NHS aims, as well, since it was established with an ethos of providing care to all. However, Cuba: My Revolution also underlines that revolutionary principles and goals are met with practical problems related to political and economic turmoil. The novel gives examples of when wellness appeared framed by political loyalty or resource, and the disparity between ideological belief and experience is felt. It focuses on the subject that even though ideals can imagine a world where everyone is cared for and delivered, it is sometimes necessary to combine moral vision with governance (Bauchner, 2017).

The National Health Reform Act of 1949 and the revolutionary ideals depicted in Cuba: My Revolution both believe that health care is a human right. The Cuban Revolution was based on the elements of Guevara’s radio speeches, intrigued by the right to healthcare, and also tied to post-war techniques aimed at making healthcare a utility service. However, while the 1949 health reforms established a structured system, Cuba: My Revolution describes what is possible regarding revolutionizing healthcare ideas when faced with limited resources and pressures from ideology. This story map shows how both systems intended to harness healthcare as an emancipatory project but in different circumstances. By looking at Guevara’s vision for Cuba and the goals of the formation of the NHS, we can see that the fight for the treatment of healthcare as a human right spans the globe and is not without its political hardships.

Bauchner, H. (2017). Health care in the United States: a right or a privilege. JAMA, 317(1), 29-29.

McIntyre, A., & Song, Z. (2019). The US Affordable Care Act: Reflections and directions at the close of a decade. PLoS medicine, 16(2), e1002752.

Neiman, P. U., Tsai, T. C., Bergmark, R. W., Ibrahim, A., Nathan, H., & Scott, J. W. (2021). The affordable care act at 10 years: evaluating the evidence and navigating an uncertain future. Journal of Surgical Research, 263, 102-109.

Orszag, P. R. (2016). US health care reform: cost containment and improvement in quality. Jama, 316(5), 493-495.