Mechanisms of Health Care Accountability, Marketisation and the Elusive State

In the United Kingdom during the past decade, individuals and groups have increasingly tested the extent to which NHS and private health providers can be held to account through principles of judicial review, or the Human Rights Act (HRA) for failure to provide access to publicly funded health care. Moreover a range of non judicial mechanisms have been developed, for monitoring standards and promoting transparency, participation and equality in the provision of NHS services. This article recognises that an important symbiosis has developed between administrative law courts and non-judicial mechanisms to enhance equality of opportunity and transparency in the distribution of health care resources. However, it also argues, that the unimpeded advance of corporate providers into NHS clinical services reflects a critical gap in the potential to hold government to account for failure to provide access to publicly funded health services, in accordance with commitments in Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).