ABSTRACT
National health insurance centralizes the financing of medical care through taxation and/or social insurance. Under national health insurance (NHI) health care—at least the very large part of it comprising personal services rather than public goods—could continue to be supplied in private hospitals and by family doctors (and others) paid by capitation or by fee. Health services around the world are supplied by varying combinations of government and private financing and control. World Health Organization figures are supplied by governments and should be taken with a pinch of salt. Government in Canada has largely replaced private insurance funds as the paymaster of doctors and hospitals. The Canadian federal government's precipitate restriction of cost-sharing is not an isolated act but a symptom of political control of medicine. National health insurance and state medicine reflect the politician's earnest but erroneous belief that he knows better than the patient what to expect of the physician.
