List of Countries with Universal Healthcare True
 

Update 3/21/2010: Together with the House’s passage of the Democrats’ reform bill tonight, the US will have close-to universal health care in 2014, using an insurance mandate system.
Thirty-two of the thirty-three developed nations have universal health care,Buy Windows 7, together with the United States being the lone exception [1]. The following list, compiled from WHO sources where possible, shows the start date and type of  system used to implement universal health care in each developed country [2]. Note that universal health care does not imply government-only health care,Office 2007 Standard Key, as many countries implementing a universal health care plan continue to have both public and private insurance and medical providers.
Country
Start Date of Universal Health Care
System Type Click links for more source material on each country’s health care system. Norway
1912
Single Payer New Zealand
1938
Two Tier Japan
1938
Single Payer Germany
1941
Insurance Mandate Belgium
1945
Insurance Mandate United Kingdom
1948
Single Payer Kuwait
1950
Single Payer Sweden
1955
Single Payer Bahrain
1957
Single Payer Brunei
1958
Single Payer Canada
1966
Single Payer Netherlands
1966
Two-Tier Austria
1967
Insurance Mandate United Arab Emirates
1971
Single Payer Finland
1972
Single Payer Slovenia
1972
Single Payer Denmark
1973
Two-Tier Luxembourg
1973
Insurance Mandate France
1974
Two-Tier Australia
1975
Two Tier Ireland
1977
Two-Tier Italy
1978
Single Payer Portugal
1979
Single Payer Cyprus
1980
Single Payer Greece
1983
Insurance Mandate Spain
1986
Single Payer South Korea
1988
Insurance Mandate Iceland
1990
Single Payer Hong Kong
1993
Two-Tier Singapore
1993
Two-Tier Switzerland
1994
Insurance Mandate Israel
1995
Two-Tier United States
2014
Insurance Mandate
Will the United States join this list in 2009?
[1] Roughly 15% of Americans lack insurance coverage, so the US clearly has not yet achieved universal health care. There is no universal definition of developed or industrialized nations. For this list, those countries with UN Human Development Index scores above 0.9 on a 0 to 1 scale are considered developed.
[2] The dates given are estimates,Office 2010 X86,Math Forum Suzuki Magic Squares, since universal health care arrived gradually in many countries. In Germany for instance, government insurance programs began in 1883, but did not reach universality until 1941. Typically the date provided is the date of passage or enactment for a national health care Act mandating insurance or establishing universal health insurance.
System Types:
Single Payer: The government provides insurance for all residents (or citizens) and pays all health care expenses except for copays and coinsurance. Providers may be public, private, or a combination of both.
Two-Tier: The government provides or mandates catrastrophic or minimum insurance coverage for all residents (or citizens),Office 2010 Key, while allowing the purchase of additional voluntary insurance or fee-for service care when desired. In Singapore all residents receive a catastrophic policy from the government coupled with a health savings account that they use to pay for routine care. In other countries like Ireland and Israel, the government provides a core policy which the majority of the population supplement with private insurance.
Insurance Mandate: The government mandates that all citizens purchase insurance, whether from private,Office 2007 Professional, public, or non-profit insurers. In some cases the insurer list is quite restrictive, while in others a healthy private market for insurance is simply regulated and standardized by the government. In this kind of system insurers are barred from rejecting sick individuals, and individuals are required to purchase insurance, in order to prevent typical health care market failures from arising.