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:
“While I do not think it was so intended I have always been of the opinion that this turned out to be much the best for me. I had no national experience. What I have ever been able to do has been the result of first learning how to do it. I am not gifted with intuition. I need not only hard work but experience to be ready to solve problems. The Presidents who have gone to Washington without first having held some national office have been at great disadvantage.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“It is always singular, but encouraging, to meet with common sense in very old books, as the Heetopades of Veeshnoo Sarma; a playful wisdom which has eyes behind as well as before, and oversees itself. It asserts their health and independence of the experience of later times. This pledge of sanity cannot be spared in a book, that it sometimes pleasantly reflect upon itself.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The service a man renders his friend is trivial and selfish, compared with the service he knows his friend stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he had begun to serve his friend, and now also. Compared with that good-will I bear my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)