Healthcare in The United Kingdom

Healthcare in the United Kingdom is a devolved matter, meaning England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales each have their own systems of private and publicly funded healthcare. Each country having different policies and priorities has resulted in a variety of differences existing between the systems. That said, each country provides public healthcare to all UK permanent residents that is free at the point of need, being paid for from general taxation. In addition, each also has a private healthcare sector which is considerably smaller than its public equivalent, with provision of private healthcare acquired by means of private health insurance, funded as part of an employer funded healthcare scheme or paid directly by the customer, though provision can be restricted for those with conditions such as AIDS/HIV.

Taken together, the World Health Organization, in 2000, ranked the provision of healthcare in the United Kingdom as fifteenth best in Europe and eighteenth in the world. A more recent report, the Commonwealth Fund Mirror, Mirror on the Wall survey of seven first world healthcare systems, ranked the United Kingdom as second overall, taking first place in subcategories including effective care and efficiency. Overall, around 8.4 per cent of the United Kingdom's gross domestic product is spent on healthcare, which is 0.5% below the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average and about one percent below the average of the European Union.