Volume, costs and content of medical care depend on professional and public expectations. The UK National Health Service (NHS) removed price barriers to access, so depressed expectations became an important factor in cost control. In USA, professional control of care business inflated expectations and costs. Managed care in the NHS failed to rationalize care because managers seem even less trustworthy than clinicians as arbiters of rational expectations in contexts of underfunding. Rational expectations depend on restored trust, mutual and managerial respect for expertise of both clinicians and patients, and transcendence of the provider-consumer model for value production in medical care.