Affordability of National Health Insurance ... and definition of a billion : correspondence

I would like to comment on an article about South Africa's future National Health Insurance, written by Dr Stephen Craven and published in the Cape Doctor of April 2013. Dr Craven states, 'The expense of the National Health Service [in the UK] is colossal. There is no cost control. The total budget for 2010-11 was £107 billion which, divided by 63.1 million (the 2011 population), comes to the more comprehensible £1.7 million per head.'