The British National Health Service: a history of reforms, 1990-2002

Recent decades have witnessed important transformations in public services that involve changes in the State's role as central agent in the regulation of public-private relations and the definition of levels of public financing. Health system reform proposals are part of the process of social transformations that have affected various nations. However, changes in the linkage between different dimensions are the result of both broad processes of social transformation and specific experiences and timelines, essential for understanding the results of this process. In recent decades, the British National Health Service (NHS) underwent the most important reform process since its creation in 1948. This process began with a set of measures implemented by the Conservative government in 1991, which were continued through alterations introduced in 1997 and 2002. An analysis of the NHS reform not only provides elements for understanding the current debate sparked by the initiatives led by Boris Johnson and aimed at a new NHS reform starting in 2021; such analysis also allows identifying convergences with other reform proposals in public health systems that were shaped under inspiration from the British model, as in the case of Brazil. The current article aims to discuss and analyse a case of health system reform that can be considered paradigmatic for the development of major trends in this field. The article seeks to specifically analyse the reform processes carried out since the 1990s in the NHS and their consequences for the health system's restructuring.