Czechoslovak national insurance : a contribution to the pattern of social security the Czechoslovak National insurance act.

  • Czechoslovakia.
Date:
[1948]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Czechoslovak national insurance : a contribution to the pattern of social security the Czechoslovak National insurance act. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    arises out of the necessity to provide a higher reward in old age and disability to higher-paid employees. Further, national insurance should increasingly make those occupations which are most valuable for the national economy most attractive to workers. This principle has so far been fully applied only in the case of miners; there are, however, a number of other employments calling for a future increase of benefit rates. As for benefits in kind provided by sickness insurance, al- ready to-day this description of benefit represents 60 per cent of the total expenditure, while only 40 per cent is spent on cash benefits. It seems to us that the requirements of the. people are better served by benefits in kind, and the improve- ment and extension of the scope of these benefits must be our first aim. Practically this will mean an extension of the scope of preventive care, the establishment of new hospitals and clinics, up-to-date equipment, and an intensified fight against social diseases. It may be remarked in this connection that national insurance is being built and developed in close con- junction with the planned social investment programme, in- cluding the establishment and equipment of centres of pre- ventive and curative care, under the Five-Year Plan. The successful implementation of that social investment plan will be the next step towards that generous scale of benefits which inspired the creators of national insurance. My country and its inhabitants are rich neither as to size of population, nor in natural resources. Our greatest asset is work, and the effective and just organisation of work. The working people of this country believe that in this sense and according to their capacities they are contributing by building up their national insurance towards a new and better organ- isation of society; and it is in this sense that we should like our contribution to the pattern of social security to be judged by the workers of all countries to whom we now present it.