Publicly funded healthcare is a type of health care financing that uses a publicly managed fund to cover the expense of all or most healthcare demands. Typically, this occurs under some sort of democratic accountability, the right to which is established in regulations that apply to the entire population contributing to or getting benefits from the fund.
The fund might be a non-profit trust that pays out for healthcare based on common norms defined by the members, or it could take another democratic form. In certain nations, the fund is directly controlled by the government or a government agency for the benefit of the entire people. This distinguishes it from other types of private medical insurance, in which access rights are subject to contractual obligations between an insured person (or their sponsor) and an insurance company, which seeks to profit by managing the flow of funds between funders and providers of health care services.
When taxation is the major means of financing health care, and sometimes when mandatory insurance is used, all eligible persons receive the same level of coverage regardless of their financial situation or risk factors.
The majority of developed countries have health-care systems that are largely or entirely supported by the government. Most Western industrial countries have a social insurance system founded on the idea of social solidarity that protects eligible people from incurring the direct expense of most health-care expenditures, which are supported by taxation during their working lives.
There are many diverse systems to funding and providing medical services among countries with significant public support for healthcare. Systems can be supported through general government income (as in Canada, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and India) or through a government social security system with a separate budget and hypothecated taxes or contributions (as in Australia, France, Belgium, Japan, and Germany). The proportion of the cost of care covered also varies: in Canada, the government pays for full medical care, whereas in Japan, patients must pay 10 to 30 percent of the cost of a hospital stay. The services provided by public systems differ. For example, the Belgian government pays the bulk of the fees for dental and eye care, while the Australian government covers eye care but not dental care.
Employment circumstances are also a point of contention in the public vs private debate. However, this complex aspect varies depending on the function in a health care. For some senior doctors, the chance to operate independently in the private sector offers professional benefits like as increased autonomy, higher pay, and the time to deliver more personalized and attentive care. These latter traits are likely to appeal to patients looking for quick access to a skilled physician. Notably, the NHS has a majority of its medical profession that is glad to serve in the public sector and rejects possibilities for private practice.
Medicine that is publicly funded may be administered and given by the government, as in the Nordic nations, Portugal, Spain, and Italy; however, in certain systems, medicine is publicly paid but the majority of hospital providers are private, like in Canada. The institution that provides public health insurance is not always a government agency, and its budget may be separate from the general state budget. Some healthcare systems do not provide universal coverage or limit coverage to public health institutions. In certain countries, such as Germany, various public insurance institutions are united by a unified legislative framework. Some countries, like as the Netherlands and Switzerland, allow for-profit private insurers to participate.
