Rationing and Rationality in the National Health Service : The Persistence of Waiting Lists

This book offers an analysis of the ways in which current means of rationing health care in Britain produce the least desirable outcome: The restriction of access to some of the most cost effective treatments.

The problems of gaining access to non-urgent surgical treatments have beset the NHS from its beginning, and the existence of waiting lists is assumed to be the inevitable feature of the overwhelming demand for healthcare.

Frankel and West's book examines the necessity of such waiting lists and considers the system which perpetuates them in its wider historical and political context.