Le patient est-il un consommateur ?

The scope of the paper is to examin the opportunity, for the patient, to be considered as an health care consumer. It considers the delivery of healthcare through two aspects which show a gradual interaction between legal rules and economic models. The first one deals with the two parts involved in the health care relationship, i.e patient and provider, whereas the second one focuses on the economic activity involved, the delivery itself. The paper illustrates the current trend consistent with the subsidiarity and proportionality principles : the State main responsability in respect of health policy, being integrated by efficiency criteria in the delivery stage, to ensure a more effective application of the right to good quality care. In this sense, consumer standards could be a useful tool to implement the fundamental access right to healthcare.