John Appleby, FAcSS is a British economist. He was chief economist at the King's Fund from 1998 to 2016 and is now Director of Research and Chief Economist at the Nuffield Trust. Appleby has worked in the National Health Service in Birmingham and London, and as senior lecturer at the universities of Birmingham and East Anglia. He is a Visiting Professor at the City Health Economics Centre, City University London. For five years he worked for the National Association of Health Authorities (now the NHS Confederation) as manager of the Association’s Central Policy Unit. He writes extensively about current health policy matters, including the economic issues associated with the government’s reform agenda for health care such as the expansion of competitive forces in the NHS, patient choice, se