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The principles and instruments used for healthcare planning in the 1950s are now increasingly contested for their inefficient or negative effects. The 2007 Hospital plan, abrogation of the health map, and then the HPST (Hospitals, Patients, Health, and Territories) Law have made competition–“the antinomy of planning–“the new principle of public policies. The ideal healthcare development based on healthcare needs objectivized by disciplines such as public health or health economics now seems to have been discredited. The administrative bodies which enabled the practical implementation of both ideals and the planning approach are now facing a slow decline to the benefit of actors with other skills and other action principles. This paper looks back at the factors underlying this decline. Suffering from the neoliberal questioning of "planism," and also–“and above all–“from criticism from within the planning community itself, planning and its actors have had to confront competition from other administrative groups in which new knowledge and powers are deployed.