The interplay between economic and political logics: path dependency in health care in England

The purpose of this article is to use the ideas of path dependency to understand why policies implemented by governments for health care in England were and are suboptimal in terms of the control of total costs, the equitable distribution of hospital services, and efficiency in delivery. We do this by relating the economic logic of achieving these objectives to the political logic of a state-hierarchical system in which ministers are accountable for the effects of policies and doctors largely decide the supply and demand of health care. The initial policy path of the National Health Service (NHS) controlled costs but lacked systems to achieve equity and efficiency in the funding of hospitals. Policies were introduced to achieve equity, but not efficiency, in the 1970s. The Thatcher government sought efficiency through a budgetary squeeze in the 1980s, which culminated in the NHS funding crisis of 1987 - 1988. The result was the policies of the NHS internal market, which promised efficiency by introducing a purchaser-provider split and a system of provider competition in which money would follow the patient. These promises justified an injection of extra funds for three years, but only a pallid model of the internal market was implemented. The Blair government abandoned the rhetoric of competition but maintained the purchaser-provider split and continued to constrain total NHS costs, which resulted in the funding crisis of 1998 - 1999. Current policies are to substantially increase spending on health care and reintroduce a system of provider competition in which money will follow the patient.