private sector and form a competitive market on the health delivery side. However, many healthcare providers took advantage of the system by offering unnecessary services to a larger number of patients and then billing the government. In the face of increasing loss and the need for cost containment, NHI changed the payment system from fee-for-service to a global budget, a kind of prospective payment system, in 2002. Taiwan's success with a single-payer health insurance program is owed, in part, to the country's human resources and the government's organizational skills, allowing for the effective and efficient management of the government-run health insurance program. South Korea South Korea used to have a multipayer social health insurance universal healthcare system, similar to systems used in countries like Japan and Germany, with healthcare societies providing coverage for the whole populace. Prior to 1977, the country had voluntary private health insurance, but reforms initiated in 1977 resulted in universal coverage by 1989. A major healthcare financing reform in 2000 merged all medical societies into the National Health Insurance Service. This new service became a single-payer healthcare system in 2004. Regions with 'Beveridge Model' systems Nordic countries The Nordic countries are sometimes considered to have single-payer health care services, as opposed to single-payer national health care insurance like Taiwan or Canada. This is a form of the 'Beveridge Model' of health care systems that features public health providers in addition to public health insurance. The term "Scandinavian model" or "Nordic model" of health care systems has a few common features: largely public providers, limited private health coverage, and regionally-run, devolved systems with limited involvement from the central government. Due to this third characteristic, they can also be argued to be single-payer only on a regional level, or to be multi-payer systems, as opposed to the nationally run health coverage found in Taiwan and South Korea. United Kingdom Healthcare in the United Kingdom is a devolved matter, meaning that England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland all have their own system of private and publicly funded healthcare, generally referred to as the National Health Service (NHS). With largely public or government-owned providers, this also fits into the 'Beveridge Model' of health care systems, sometimes considered to be single-payer, with relatively little private involvement compared to other universal systems. Each country's having different policies and priorities has resulted in a variety of differences existing between the systems. That said,