OECD: public health spending picks up

30 Jun 14
Public health spending has started to rise across the world’s wealthiest countries, but the pace of growth remains well below pre-crisis levels, especially in Europe, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has said.

By Judith Ugwumadu | 30 June 2014

Public health spending has started to rise across the world’s wealthiest countries, but the pace of growth remains well below pre-crisis levels, especially in Europe, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has said.

A new online database, published today, shows that pre-crisis growth rates of OECD health expenditure in the public sector peaked at 6% in 2008 before stagnating completely in 2010.

The pace of growth, however, picked-up in 2011 reaching 1%, and has since remained on a gradual upward trajectory across the 34 OECD member countries. In 2012 (the last year for which figures are available), the growth rate stood at around 1.2%, still well below the pre-crisis peak.

Covering the period 1960 to 2013, the ‘essential’ interactive tool carries out comparative analyses on health status, health care resources and utilisation, risk factors to health expenditure and financing. The database also draws lessons from international comparisons of diverse health systems.

It found that in Europe, health spending continued to fall in 2012 in Greece, with expenditure 25% lower in 2012 than in 2009, primarily driven by cuts in public spending. Health spending cuts were also seen in Italy, Portugal and Spain, as well as in the Czech Republic and Hungary, causing the rate of expenditure to drop.

In contrast, outside Europe, Chile and Mexico saw strong growth in health spending in 2012, at 6.5% and 8.5% respectively, largely due to efforts to improve healthcare coverage and access.

Health spending in Korea has continued to grow at a yearly rate of 6% since 2009, mainly due to increases in private spending.

In the US, health spending grew by 2.1% in 2012, above the OECD average, but similar to growth rates in 2010 and 2011, the think-tank said.

The OECD also noted that while spending on hospital and outpatient care grew in many countries in 2012, almost two-thirds of OECD countries had experienced real falls in pharmaceutical spending since 2009.

 

Did you enjoy this article?

Related articles

Have your say

Newsletter

CIPFA latest

Most popular

Most commented

Events & webinars