This article reviews changes in the organization, delivery and financing of health care and old age services in the UK and Sweden over the past 25 years. User autonomy has become a more important policy objective than equity of access or equality of opportunity, with a greater reliance on market...

The reliance on consumer choice to drive improvements in public services is at the centre of policy debates in the UK and elsewhere. However, the discourse of consumerism occurs in the midst of a quagmire as to whether users of public services can legitimately be considered as customers,...