List of tables; Preface; Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; Part I. Medicine and the State: 1900 to 1939: 1. 'A game of animal grab', medical practice, 1920–39; 2. National hygiene and nationalization: the failure of a federal health policy, 1918–39; 3. Doctors, the states and interwar medical politics; 4. The defeat of national health insurance; Part II. The Reconstruction of Medicine? Planning and Politics, 1940 to 1949: 5. The BMA wins the War; 6. From 'Sales and service' to 'cash and carry': the planning of postwar reconstruction; 7. Paying the doctor: the BMA caught between salaried medicine and fee-for-service; 8. Relieving the patient, not the doctor: the Hospital Benefits Act; 9. A war of attrition: the fate of the pharmaceutical benefits scheme; 10. The limits of reform: the Chifley government and a national health service, 1945–9; Part III. The Public and the Private: 11. Private practice, publicly funded: the Page health service; 12. Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index.