This paper examines problems of setting targets for health care performance in which the centre sets a uniform set of targets and levels of performance. The case study examined by the paper is from the system of performance assessment of ‘star ratings’ that was introduced from 2001...

This article considers how the 'accidental logics' of political settlements for the English National Health Service (NHS) and the Medicare and Medicaid programmes in the United States have resulted in different institutional arrangements and different implicit social contracts for rationing,...