Health Care in Britain and U.S.: A comparison

History of the British National Health Service

The British National Health Service (NHS) is a publicly-funded healthcare system which provides the majority of healthcare for those in the United Kingdom, ranging from general practitioner care and Emergency Departments to long-term care and dentistry (National). Unlike other public healthcare systems in Europe, it pays directly for healthcare expenses, with a few minor exceptions, and also employs the doctors and nurses providing these services, and in most cases, owns the hospitals and clinics in which care is given. General Practitioners are private practitioners under contract to the NHS. Under a new General Medical Service (GMS) contract, which came into being in April 2004, GPs now get paid a regular income for working 8am to 6pm Monday through Friday, with no out-of-hou

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s of the United Kingdom. Provision of healthcare is the responsibility of 15 geographically-based health boards. The NHS in Northern Ireland is administered by the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety, and is organized into several groups under the one agency. The United States "System" America does not have one health care system to which the NHS can be compared. There are hundreds of different health insurance plans across the country to which people can subscribe so any real comparison is impossible. Therefore, in view of the broadness of US health care and in order for there to be a meaningful comparison to be done, Kaiser Permanente has been chosen as a typical HMO (Health Maintenance Organization) that operates within the norms of what is a typical HMO in the United States. The reason an HMO and not a PPO or other general type of health care system is being chosen is that if any comparison is to be made with the NHS, there must be something in common for comparison. An HMO comes closest to being a common system used by a typical US Citizen that can be comparable to the NHS used by the typical British Citizen. A comparison study of Kaiser Permanente California (which of all other HMOs most closely
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Kaiser NHS, Health Authorities, Service NHS, Sekhri White, Sterling NHS, Permanente NHS, National Unlike, System America, HMO PPO, NHS NHS, national health, health care, health service, national health service, sekhri white, feachem sekhri, feachem sekhri white, kaiser permanente, united kingdom, british national health, 2005 17, health authorities, 17 dec, 2005 17 dec, 17 dec 2005,
Approximate Word count = 1294
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

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