British health systems and their values in the late 20th / early 21st century
Benjamin Hunter: The Moral Making of the New 'Global' NHS
Fair public healthcare systems are powerful tools for the promotion of the health of populations. But the pooling and spending of public resources needed to maintain such systems are highly contested processes and inevitably raise questions around institutional responsibilities and entitlements. This paper examines the disputed moral terrain for one public healthcare system – the English National Health Service (NHS) – and in particular the debates governing its national-international boundaries. How should a 'national' public institution approach issues of international knowledge transfer, recruitment and provision?
Paul Atkinson: ‘Tragic choices’: Which health care technologies should we fund and how should we decide? The National Institute for Clinical Excellence: a Contemporary History.
This paper examines the history of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE)'s role in so-called tragic choices about which health care technologies will be funded by the NHS - examples famously include beta interferon, kidney cancer drugs, dementia drugs, and orkambi for cystic fibrosis. NICE has become a world leader in the application of health economics and in patient and public involvement in decision making. I will discuss why this activity has been delegated to an arm’s-length body, how NICE has sought to secure legitimacy (scientific and democratic) for its decisions, what challenges it has faced, and what NICE’s experience might show us about managing the moral dilemmas raised by the pursuit of cost-effective health care.
- this session is free to attend but booking is required.
This page was last updated on 14 March 2025
