B) Say what you know about the cost of health service in America, in Russia and in other countries nowadays.

ХVII. a) Bead and translate the texts below:

1. In Great Britain primary health care is in the hands of family practitioners who work within the National Health Service. The family practitioner services are those givento patients by doctors, dentists, opticians and pharmacists of their own choice. Family doctors who are under contract to the National Health Service have an average about 2,250 patients. They provide the first diagnosis in the case of illness and either prescribe a suitable course of treatment or refer a patient to the more specialized services and hospital consultants.

A large proportion of the hospitals in the National Health Service were built in the nineteenth century; some trace their origin to much earlier charitable foundations, such as the famous St. Bartholomew's and St. Thomas' hospitals in London.

About 85 per cent of the cost of the health services is paid for through general taxation. The rest is met from the National Health Service contribution and from the charges for prescriptions, dental treatment, dentures and spectacles. Health authorities may raise funds from voluntary sources.

(See: "Britain 1983". Lnd., 1983)

2. Nobody pretends that the National Health Service in Britain is perfect. Many doctors complain that they waste hours filling in National Insurance forms, and that they have so many patients that they do not have enough time to look after any of them properly. Nurses complain that they are overworked and underpaid.

3. Many Health Service hospitals are old-fashioned and overcrowded, and, because of the shortage of beds, patients often have to wait a long time for operations. Rich people prefer to go to private doctors, or to see specialists in Harley Street, the famous "doctors" street in London. When these people are ill they go to a private nursing-home, for which they may pay as much as £ 100 a week. Alternatively, they may hire a private room in an ordinary hospital, for which they will pay about £ 10 a day.

(Musman R. Britain To-day. Lnd., 1974)

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