European health care systems are facing diverse challenges. In health policy, strong primary care is seen as key to deal with these challenges. European countries differ in how strong their primary care systems are. Two groups of traditionally weak primary care systems are distinguished. First a...

Although the concept of healthcare renunciation is regularly employed in health surveys and increasingly called into the French public debate, it has never been subject to methodological questioning to analyse the term’s underlying significations. If health surveys frequently refer to...

We study the psycho-social determinants of self-assessed health in order to explain social inequalities in health in France.We use a unique general population survey to assess the respective impact on self-assessed health status of subjective perceptions of social capital, social support, and...

Objectives Since 2006 France experiences an innovative version of Gate-keeping which aims at regulating access to outpatient specialist care. We describe the reform's initial objectives, the political pathway which lead to the implementation of a reshaped reform and discuss the first outcomes...

La France, bien que pourvue d’un système de protection sociale à vocation universelle, connaît des inégalités sociales dans l’accès et l’utilisation des services de santé. L’analyse des déterminants du renoncement aux soins pour raisons financières apporte un nouvel éclairage...

L’étude comparative des réformes des systèmes de protection maladie de quatre pays européens (Allemagne, Angleterre, Espagne, France) permet de mettre en évidence une tendance convergente au développement d’une concurrence encadrée. Elle se traduit par l’élargissement du choix pour...

From the outset, reform of regional health agencies in France, has been torn between two conflicting approaches: traditional state planning and the more recent New Public Management. In fact, the “Hôpital Patients Santé Territoires” (Hospital Patients Health Territories) bill juxtaposes...

Common sense as health professionals tend to dramatize the conflict between managerial rationality on one side, professional ethics on the other. According to this point of view, budgetary constraints and implementation of new managerial tools are many dangers to the values that health...

Non l’hôpital public n’est pas mort ! Car il soigne toujours, et plutôt bien. L’immense majorité d’entre nous lui voue un attachement fidèle, tous les sondages en témoignent ! Un chantier de mise en pièces de l’hôpital, dont les meilleurs morceaux sont promis au privé, est...