Derek Wanless' 2002 report on the future course of NHS spending was immensely important. Not only did it directly inform the Chancellor's spending plans for the NHS for the next five years - which gave the NHS an unprecedented real increase of over 40 per cent by 2007/8 - but it also laid out a framework for revisiting a fundamental public policy question: how much do we want to spend on health care? In setting out a costed 'vision' of the NHS in 2022, the Wanless review necessarily made many assumptions about what a desirable health service would look like, how the population's health would change, what actions it would take to radically reduce waiting times, the impact of changing demographics on the need for health care spending and the prospects for improvements in NHS productivity. As part of the Office of Health Economics' 40th anniversary celebrations, the OHE, together with the King's Fund and the Centre for Health Economics of the University of York, convened a one-day seminar to explore the assumptions, estimates and models underlying the spending recommendations made by the Wanless Report. This book covers the seminar presentations from experts from the UK, America and France as well as subsequent discussions from a distinguished invited audience.