Could money cure sick health-care systems in Britain, which will be the place to look for proof in 2003. The National Health Service (NHS), which offers free health care financed by taxes, is receiving an emergency no-expense-spared injection of cash. By 2007, total health spending in Britain will reach over 9% of GDP—the same share France had when it was rated the world's best health service by the World Health Organization in 2000. The Labor government's response was not to conduct a fundamental review about how best to reform. health care for the 21st century. Rather, it concluded that shortage of money, not the form. of financing or provision, was the main problem. In 2002, Gordon Brown, the powerful chancellor of the exchequer, used a review of the NHS's future financing requirements to reject alternative funding models that would allow patients to sign up with competing insurers and so exercise greater control over their own health care. Alan Milburn, the health minister, has made some tentative steps back towards the internal market introduced by the Conservative government. It means that a dozen top-ranking hospitals will also have been given greater freedom to run their own affairs. However, these reforms will not deliver real consumer power to patients. As a result, the return on the money pouring into the NHS looks set to be disappointingly meager. Already there are worrying signs that much of the cash cascade will be soaked up in higher pay and shorter hours for staff and bear little relation to extra effort, productivity and quality. Some improvements will occur but far less than might be expected from such a financial windfall. Health-care systems in the developed world share a common history, argues David Cutler at Harvard University. First governments founded generous universal systems after the Second World War. With few controls over the demand for medical care or its supply, costs then spiraled up. Starting in the 1980s there was a drive to contain expenditure, often through crude constraints on medical budgets which ran counter to rising patient expectations Now this strategy has run its course: a third wave of reforms is under way to increase efficiency and restrain demand through cost-sharing between insurers and patients. Viewed from this perspective, the government's plan to shower cash on a largely unreformed NHS looks anomalous. But before more fundamental change can be contemplated in Britain, the old system must be shown to be incapable of cure through money. This harsh lesson is likely to be learnt as early as 2003. In contrast to Britain, France is funding their medical care