The National Health Service (NHS) is the shared name of three of the four publicly funded healthcare systems in the United Kingdom. The systems are primarily funded through general taxation rather than requiring insurance payments, and were founded in 1948. They provide a comprehensive range of health services, the vast majority of which are free at the point of use to residents of the United Kingdom.
The individual systems are:
- National Health Service (England)
- Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland (HSENI)
- NHS Scotland
- NHS Wales
Only the English NHS is officially called the "National Health Service" however the other three services are referred to as "The NHS" in common speech.
Read more about National Health Service: Structure
Famous quotes containing the words national, health and/or service:
“All men are lonely. But sometimes it seems to me that we Americans are the loneliest of all. Our hunger for foreign places and new ways has been with us almost like a national disease. Our literature is stamped with a quality of longing and unrest, and our writers have been great wanderers.”
—Carson McCullers (1917–1967)
“The health of the soul is something we can be no more sure of than that of the body; and though a man may seem far from the passions, yet he is in as much danger of falling into them as one in a perfect state of health of having a fit of sickness.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“Finally, your lengthy service ended,
Lay your weariness beneath my laurel tree.”
—Horace [Quintus Horatius Flaccus] (65–8)