Various countries have adopted a various types of health insurance systems to protect their citizens against the financial risks of medical needs and to facilitate easy access to appropriate medical care. Broadly health insurance systems are classified into: single-payer and multiple-payer systems. In single-payer systems, one organization-typically the government-collects and pools revenues and purchases health services for the entire population, while in multiple-payer systems several organizations carry out these roles for specific segments of the population.

Usually the term Single-Payer is used to describe a type of financing system. In the case of health care, a single-payer system would be an entity like a government run non-profit organization which would collect all health care fees, and pay out all health care costs. Health care delivery facilities like hospitals, doctors, nurses etc. remains in private hands and patients have guaranteed choice of care from providers. In U.S. Single Payer system is also known as Medicare for All. Single Payer system expands the cost-effectiveness and makes Medicare program more efficient to cover each and everyone in the United States. It creates a single-tiered system that covers all people equally regardless of age, income, employment, or diagnosis. This unified system would promote universal high quality healthcare, because quality of care would have to be kept high enough to be acceptable to all citizens.

U.S. has multi payer healthcare system. The collection of money for healthcare is done by government in the form of taxes from individuals and businesses; and the private insurance agencies in the form of premiums and other payments like co-payment and deductibles. In a similar fashion both agencies deliver the healthcare, private insurance agencies reimburses healthcare providers for the services used by privately insured individuals and government reimburses the healthcare service providers for the services used by publicly insured people like those enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP etc.

It is necessary to distinguish single payer from the ‘Socialized Medicine’ (as in United Kingdom), where the healthcare providing agencies are owned by the government. In single payer system government does not own the healthcare providing facilities. In socialized medicine the government owns the hospitals and the doctors and nurses are paid by the government. Single payer health system is