Didier Tabuteau, a state councillor, is currently in charge of the Health Chair at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (IEP), Paris. He was a general director of the Agence du médicament, from its creation, in 1993, to 1997. In 2011, he was one of the instigators, with André Grimaldi and Olivier Lyon-Caen, of Manifeste pour une santé égalitaire (Editions Odile Jacob).

How to reconcile deontology and competition, quality healthcare and economic imperatives, patients’ rights and medical practitioners’ interests? How to ensure that the healthcare system is egalitarian? How to maintain a system of health insurance based on solidarity between the healthy and the ill? How to reconcile cost reduction, on one hand, with better healthcare and a fairer social and geographic distribution of services, on the other?
A thorough examination of these questions is urgently required — and, according to the author, it should lead to the complete overhaul of the French healthcare system.
The economic pressures on health insurance, the bio-ethic stakes resulting from medical advances and the growing inequalities in healthcare accessibility all demand a profound revision in the organisation and management of the healthcare system. Didier Tabuteau outlines the present situation, based on a detailed study of past omissions and errors.

• Organisation, geographic distribution, moral dilemmas, public health safety, cost management: a close study of all the major medical issues under discussion in France today.
• A book that aims to help define a modern, ambitious healthcare system.