Back to the future? Lessons on the pro-competitive regulation of health services.

The enactment of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 can be seen as a 'paradigm-oriented' policy transfer of the model of utilities regulation in the UK. This article draws on the literature on infrastructure regulation in order to analyse this transfer. Taking a long view on attempts to introduce competition into health services in England, it points to a number of challenges of liberalisation, corresponding to those arising in infrastructure sectors.

Advance commitment: an alternative approach to the family veto problem in organ procurement.

This article tackles the current deficit in the supply of cadaveric organs by addressing the family veto in organ donation. The authors believe that the family veto matters-ethically as well as practically-and that policies that completely disregard the views of the family in this decision are likely to be counterproductive. Instead, this paper proposes to engage directly with the most important reasons why families often object to the removal of the organs of a loved one who has signed up to the donor registry-notably a failure to understand fully and deliberate on the information and a reluctance to deal with this sort of decision at an emotionally distressing time.