The National Health Service provides most medical services in England, including primary health care, hospitalization services, long-term medical services, ophthalmology and dentistry. The National Health Service Act (1946) came into effect on July 5th. Private medical care has always coexisted with NHS, and it is mainly paid by private insurance: about 8% of the population uses it, and it is usually a supplement to NHS services. In the first decade of 2 1 century, the private sector began to use NHS more and more to improve production capacity. According to the British Medical Association, a large part of the public is opposed to this move.
The British national health insurance system mainly comes from ordinary taxes (including a certain proportion of national insurance payments). The government department in charge of NHS in Britain is the Ministry of Health, which is headed by the Minister of Health. Most of the expenditure of the Ministry of Health (September 2008,&; Pound; 9.87 billion pounds) on the national health service.