Public or private health care?

摘要

In the early 1840s the Statistical Society of London was active in monitoring and comparing mortality rates in private licensed "mad-houses" and large public asylums. David Spiegelhalter looks at the investigations of William Farr. On March 15th, 1841, William Farr, then only 33 and for 3 years the compiler of statistical abstracts for the Registrar-General, presented to the Society a paper, "Report upon the Mortality of Lunatics", in which he explained that "it was thought desirable that the mortality of lunatics in two of the largest public institutions of the country, should be compared with the mortality in the licensed propriety houses; and that, if the mortality differed, the differences should be investigated, and traced to their causes, by the methods of statistical analysis which we now possess".