Health care is the prevention, treatment, and management of illness and the preservation of mental health through the services offered by the medical, nursing, and allied health professions. Health care embraces all the goods and services designed to promote health, including “preventive, curative and palliative interventions, whether directed to individuals or to populations”. The organised provision of such services may constitute a health care system. This can include specific governmental organizations such as, in the UK, the National Health Service or a cooperation across the National Health Service and Social Services as in Shared Care. Before the term "health care" became popular, English-speakers referred to medicine or to the health sector and spoke of the treatment and prevention of illness and disease.

In most developed countries and many developing countries health care is provided to everyone regardless of their ability to pay. The National Health Service, established in 1948 by Clement Atlee's Labour government in the United Kingdom, were the world's first universal health care system provided by government and paid for from general taxation. Alternatively, compulsory government funded health insurance with nominal fees can be provided, as in Italy. Other examples are Medicare in Australia, established in the 1970s by the Labor government, and by the same name Medicare was established in Canada between 1966 and 1984. Universal health care contrasts to the systems like health care in the United States or South Africa, though South Africa is one of the many countries attempting health care reform.Physicians for a National Health Program "International Health Systems". The United States is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not provide universal health care.Insuring America's Health: Principles and Recommendations, Institute of Medicine at the National Academies of Science, 2004-01-14, accessed 2008-01-24

Settings

Health care can encompass a wide number of settings - from the informal (house calls, emergency medicine at an accident spot) to settings like nursing homes or rest homes, to 'typical' medical settings like doctor's practices, clinics and hospitals.

Industry

main: Health care industry The health care industry is considered an industry or profession which includes peoples' exercise of skill or judgment or the providing of a service related to the preservation or improvement of the health of individuals or the treatment or care of individuals who are injured, sick, disabled, or infirm. The delivery of modern health care depends on an expanding group of trained professionals coming together as an interdisciplinary team.Princeton University. (2007). health profession. Retrieved June 17, 2007, from http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=health%20professionUnited States Department of Labor. (2007, February 27). Health Care Industry Information. Retrieved June 17, 2007, from http://www.doleta.gov/BRG/Indprof/Health.cfm