Publicly funded health care is a form of health care financing designed to meet the cost of all or most health care needs from a publicly managed fund. Usually this is under some form of democratic accountability, the right of access to which are set down in rules applying to the whole population contributing to the fund or receiving benefits from it. The fund may be a not-for-profit trust which pays out for health care according to common rules established by the members or by some other democratic form. In some countries the fund is controlled directly by the government or by an agency of the government for the benefit of the entire population. This distinguishes it from other forms of private medical insurance, the rights of access to which are subject to contractual obligations between an insurer (or his sponsor) and an insurance company which seeks to make a profit by managing the flow of funds between funders and providers of health care services.
When taxation is the primary means of financing health care, and sometimes with compulsory insurance, all eligible people receive the same level of cover regardless of their financial circumstances or risk factors.
Read more about Publicly Funded Health Care: Increasing Costs, Varieties of Public Systems, Policy Discussion
Famous quotes containing the words publicly, health and/or care:
“There are people who are so presumptuous that they know no other way to praise a greatness that they publicly admire than by representing it as a preliminary stage and bridge leading to themselves.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Many women who used to be full-time mothers are discovering that outside work gives them friends, challenges, variety, money, independence; it makes them feel better about themselves, and therefore lets them be better parents.”
—Wendy Coppedge Sanford. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, introduction (1978)
“Children learn to care by experiencing good care. They come to know the blessings of gentleness, or sympathy, of patience and kindness, of support and backing first through the way in which they themselves are treated.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)