Health care

Health care, or healthcare, is the prevention, treatment, and management of illness and the preservation of health through the services offered by the medical, dental, nursing, and allied health professions. Health care embraces all the goods and services designed to promote health, including “preventive, curative and palliative interventions, whether directed to individuals or to populations”. The organised provision of such services may constitute a health care system. This can include specific governmental organizations such as, in the UK, the National Health Service or a cooperation across the National Health Service and Social Services as in Shared Care. Before the term health care became popular, English-speakers referred to medicine or to the health sector and spoke of the treatment and prevention of illness and disease.

In most developed countries and many developing countries health care is provided to everyone regardless of their ability to pay. The National Health Service, established in 1948 by Clement Atlee's Labour government in the United Kingdom, was the world's first universal health care system provided by government and paid for from general taxation. Alternatively, compulsory government funded health insurance with nominal fees can be provided, as in Italy. Other examples are Medicare in Australia, established in the 1970s by the Labor government, and by the same name Medicare was established in Canada between 1966 and 1984. Universal health care contrasts to the systems like health care in the United States or South Africa, though South Africa is one of the many countries attempting health care reform. The United States is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not provide universal health care

Health Care In India

India has both private health care system and a public, universal health care system. The universal health care system run by the local (state or territorial) governments. The "government hospitals", some of which are among the best hospitals in India, provide treatment at taxpayer cost. Most drugs are offered free of charge in these hospitals.

Most government hospitals do not require payment from people below poverty line, proof of citizenship or residency. Government hospitals in some parts of the country and some private non-profit (including teaching) hospitals charge a nominal fee to prevent abuse of the system. Most hospitals are operated on an annual budget allocated by the government, and do not rely on individual billing. These hospitals also provide better amenities (such as private air-conditioned rooms) if the patient can afford to pay. However, they charge less than comparable private hospitals.

The private clinics and hospitals are owned and operated by private individuals, small corporations and large hospital chain corporations. The private health care in many modernised hospitals in Indian cities are comparable to their counterparts in developed countries. However, the public health care system, except for the teaching hospitals, is often not as good or fast as the private hospitals.