Health care
Health care is a complex notion that encompasses a number of medical, social, political, legal, economical, cultural, antiepidemic, scientific and sanitary measures aimed at preservation and promotion of health of every person, maintaining their long-lasting active life, providing them with medical assistance in case of loss of health. Special medical and social institutes, authorities and bodies are created both locally and internationally all around the world that are designed to effectively solve such problems. One of the most famous of such organizations is the World Health Organization which deals with promotion and support of health care systems in countries. Although health care is primarily perceived as a system designed to care for people's health, it is also considered an industry that can take up a great part of a country's economy: the industry includes numerous economic systems of production, services, science, research that altogether may form up to 20 percent of the gross domestic product of a developed European country. In other countries such portion of the economy may be more or less significant depending on the political system, religion, social attitudes existing in the country. For example, unlike in western countries where the health care system is based on a commercial basis and almost all patients are supposed to pay for their treatment (like in the form of buying health insurance policies), the health systems in countries with mainly socialist political views, as well as in post soviet countries are supposed to be free for anyone seeking medical assistance. Hospitals, physicians, nursing homes, laboratories, pharmacies are completely dependent on state funding there and in many cases when there's underfunding the quality of such assistance suffers greatly which leads to bribery, corruption etc. In the countries of the post soviet block new commercial hospitals have emerged after their political systems changed and their governments have started to give licenses to private health care firms.
Several economic types of health care systems are distinguished today that are characterized by different sources of funding and principles of operation: among them are single-payer health care systems, social health insurance systems, two-tier health care systems etc.