Health care or healthcare?
health care is a noun meaning “The prevention, treatment, and management of illness or the preservation of…”; healthcare is a noun meaning “Alternative spelling of health care”. Wiktionary gives them as spellings of the same word. health care is written as two words and healthcare as one word; they are used differently.
What is the difference between health care and healthcare?
| health care | healthcare | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun | noun |
| Meaning | The prevention, treatment, and management of illness or the preservation of mental and physical well-being through the services offered by the medical… | Alternative spelling of health care |
| Example | I think free health care should also cover nearsightedness | none recorded |
| Forms | none | healthcares |
| Pronunciation | /ˈhɛlθ ˌkɛə(ɹ)/ | /ˈhɛlθkɛɚ/ /ˈhɛltkɛɐ/ /ˈhɛltkɛɚ/ |
| In writing | not counted (the list counts single words) | 30 times per million words |
Sources: health care and healthcare in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of health care and healthcare
health care
- 1
The prevention, treatment, and management of illness or the preservation of mental and physical well-being through the services offered by the medical, nursing, and allied health professions
I think free health care should also cover nearsightedness
- 2
Alternative spelling of health care
healthcare
- 1
Alternative spelling of health care
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, health care or healthcare?
health care is a phrase, which the list of single words does not count; healthcare 30 times per million words.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search health care vs healthcare?
“health care vs healthcare” is searched about 720 times a month on Google and 100 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“healthcare vs health care”, “health care or healthcare”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.