This is the first comprehensive account of a major innovation in hospital funding before the NHS. It evaluates the extent to which the hospital contributory schemes were successful in achieving comprehensive coverage of the population and providing funds for hospital services, and explores why the option of funding the post-war NHS through mass contribution was rejected. It traces the transformation of the surviving schemes into health cash plans, which retained much of the mutualist ethos of the pre-NHS era, and which offered low-cost health insurance.