The classic NHI system is found in Canada, but some newly industrialized countries - Taiwan and South Korea, for example - have also adopted the NHI model. National Health Insurance plans also control costs by limiting the medical services they will pay for, or by making patients wait to be treated. The single payer tends to have considerable market power to negotiate for lower prices CanadaвЂ™s system, for example, has negotiated such low prices from pharmaceutical companies that Americans have spurned their own drug stores to buy pills north of the border. Since thereвЂ™s no need for marketing, no financial motive to deny claims and no profit, these universal insurance programs tend to be cheaper and much simpler administratively than American-style for-profit insurance. It uses private-sector providers, but payment comes from a government-run insurance program that every citizen pays into.

This system has elements of both Beveridge and Bismarck. The Bismarck model is found in Germany, of course, and France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Japan, Switzerland, and, to a degree, in Latin America. Although this is a multi-payer model - Germany has about 240 different funds - tight regulation gives government much of the cost-control clout that the single-payer Beveridge Model provides. Doctors and hospitals tend to be private in Bismarck countries Japan has more private hospitals than the U.S. insurance industry, though, Bismarck-type health insurance plans have to cover everybody, and they donвЂ™t make a profit. It uses an insurance system - the insurers are called вЂњsickness fundsвЂќ - usually financed jointly by employers and employees through payroll deduction. Despite its European heritage, this system of providing health care would look fairly familiar to Americans. Named for the Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who invented the welfare state as part of the unification of Germany in the 19th century. Cuba represents the extreme application of the Beveridge approach it is probably the worldвЂ™s purest example of total government control. Hong Kong still has its own Beveridge-style health care, because the populace simply refused to give it up when the Chinese took over that former British colony in 1997. 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.Д¬ountries using the Beveridge plan or variations on it include its birthplace Great Britain, Spain, most of Scandinavia and New Zealand. Many, but not 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. In this system, health care is provided and financed by the government through tax payments, just like the police force or the public library. Named after William Beveridge, the daring social reformer who designed BritainвЂ™s National Health Service. For all the local variations, health care systems tend to follow general patterns. There are about 200 countries on our planet, and each country devises its own set of arrangements for meeting the three basic goals of a health care system: keeping people healthy, treating the sick, and protecting families against financial ruin from medical bills.Д«ut we donвЂ™t have to study 200 different systems to get a picture of how other countries manage health care. The book is scheduled to be published by Penguin Press in early 2009.

ReidвЂ™s upcoming book on international health care, titled вЂњWeвЂ™re Number 37!,вЂќ referring to the U.S.вЂ™s ranking in the World Health Organization 2000 World Health Report.

The model resource