The National Health Service (NHS) at 70: Bevan's double-edged legacy.

The paper analyses the achievements and problems stemming from Nye Bevan's model of a tax funded national health care system, on the assumption that only so could equity be achieved. The evidence shows that indeed the National Health Service (NHS) scores highly on equity, so vindicating Bevan's vision. The price paid is that fiscal crises are the norm for the NHS, with ever more centralisation, intensive regulation and performance management.

Rhetoric and Reality in the English National Health Service Comment on "Who Killed the English National Health Service?".

Despite fiscal stress, public confidence in the National Health Service (NHS) remains strong; privatisation has not hollowed out the service. But if long term challenges are to be overcome, pragmatism not rhetoric should be the guide.

The twenty-year war over England's National Health Service: a report from the battlefield.

This article analyzes the latest battle in the twenty-year war to change England's National Health Service (NHS), starting with the internal market reforms introduced by the Thatcher government and now carried one step farther by David Cameron's coalition government. The government's program of change is characterized by (1) its wide scope and the organizational upheavals involved and (2) the fact that it is being introduced at a time when the NHS faces unprecedented fiscal pressures. The legislation faced strong political, public, and professional hostility both from those who saw it as a crime against the founding principles of the NHS and from those who saw it as a disruptive blunder that created more problems than it solved.

Comparing the United States and United Kingdom: contrasts and correspondences.

The conventionally antithetical stereotypes of the United Kingdom and United States health care systems needs to be modified in the case of the elderly. Relative to the rest of the population, the over-65s in the United States are more satisfied with their medical care than their UK counterparts. There is also much common ground: shared worries about the quality of elderly care and similar attitudes towards assisted death.

What does the future hold for the NHS at 60?

Flux and conflict constrained by consensus as in the past

Does the NHS really need a constitution?

The best hope is that ministers will resist the temptation to introduce instant solutions to problems that are rooted in the nature of the NHS as a tax funded service that rations scarce resources

The future role of the Department of Health.

Will the new health secretary translate political rhetoric into reality for the NHS?

The new model NHS: performance, perceptions and expectations.

Objective: This article analyses the transformation of the National Health Service (NHS) in England from a command-and-control to a mimic market model.

Areas Of Agreement: Even while introducing market incentives and encouraging private providers, the new model preserves the essential characteristics of the NHS as a universal, tax-funded service free at the point of delivery.

Areas Of Controversy: The spectacle of famine among plenty -- service cutbacks at a time when the level of spending on the NHS is at a rate unprecedented in its history -- raises doubts about the competence of both local managers and central policy makers.

Rationing in the NHS.

The BMA asks the right questions but answering them will be difficult

Shooting down the NHS reform track.

Why ministers cannot pull the brake even if they want to