This title was first published in 2000: The relative performance of health authorities and general practitioners as commissioners of health care services is a crucial question in the current health care policy debate, but hitherto a poorly researched area. This work addresses that topic, and represents a systematic direct comparison of GPs and health authorities as purchasers of health care services. In doing this it centres upon two of the chief controversies about the NHS internal market: the equality of hospital waiting times for fund-holding patients, and the fairness of the budgets...