Himmelfarb, Gertrude. "Winston vs. the Webbs: A Century-old Precursor to the Obamacare Debate." The Weekly Standard, April 21, 2014.

Excerpt:

The debate over Obamacare may remind a student of British history of the debate in Britain over the National Insurance Act of 1911, which was in effect until the initiation of the welfare state after World War II. The protagonists in that debate (like ours, not formally a debate, but implicitly that) were Winston Churchill and Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Churchill, a rising star in the Liberal party and a member of Herbert Asquith’s cabinet, heartily promoted the act. The Webbs, prominent members of the Fabian Society and vigorous polemicists (“public intellectuals,” we would now call them), sharply criticized it.

 

Online:
The Weekly Standard