International comparisons of health policy, healthcare systems, and health outcomes are increasingly popular. In the wake of the World Health Organization’s controversial report comparing health systems and with the growing availability of comparative data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), health policymakers and politicians are perhaps both more able and more willing to look elsewhere for lessons on how to fund, manage, and organise health care. Moreover, the problems they face—rising costs, demographic changes, technological advances, and increasing consumer expectations—are pretty universal.

In this book Alan Gilles sets out with the ambitious intent of finding out what we can learn about good health care by comparing the healthcare systems in three countries—the UK (or, rather, England), …