ABSTRACT
The Commission would be more specific than the Council for Quality of Healthcare that was proposed in the Government's response to the report of the Kennedy Inquiry into heart surgery on children at the Bristol Royal Infirmary, or the subsequent proposals concerning new regulatory bodies. If the answer is that Government is the rule maker to guarantee care and access, we need to consider further how Government itself can be motivated to sustain the right rules. It would also be the policeman of the content on the patient-guaranteed care package that the author shall discuss below. However, if the Government itself seeks to change the rules by stifling or closing down the Commission, the authors then face the ultimate of all political problems. All of this is in fact achieved by the social insurance systems in continental Europe, and we can learn from these about what works and how it works best.
