Germany has the world's oldest national social health insurance system,[1] with origins dating back to Otto von Bismarck's Sickness Insurance Law of 1883.[2][3] In Britain, the National Insurance Act 1911 included national social health insurance for primary care (not specialist or hospital care), initially for about one third of the population — employed working class wage earners, but not their dependents.[4] This system of health insurance continued in force until the creation of the National Health Service in 1948 which created a universal service, funded out of general taxation rather than on an insurance basis, and providing health services to all legal residents.