The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care

by T.R. Reid

THE BEVERIDGE MODEL This arrangement is named after William Beveridge, a daring social reformer (we’ll meet him in chapter 7) who inspired Britain’s National Health Service. In this system, health care is provided and financed by the government, through tax payments. There are no medical bills; rather, medical treatment is a public service, like the fire department or the public library. In Beveridge systems, many (sometimes all) hospitals and clinics are owned by the government; some doctors are government employees, but there are also private doctors who collect their fees from the government. These systems tend to have low costs per capita, because the government, as the sole payer, controls what doctors can do and what they can charge. Countries using the Beveridge Model, or variations on it, include its birthplace, Great Britain, as well as Italy, Spain, and most of Scandinavia.