It’s The Prices, Stupid: Why The United States Is So Different From Other Countries

TLDR

The study presents and discusses the distribution of public and private health spending across OECD countries. The authors use OECD data from 2000 to compare health systems, pharmaceutical spending, capacity, and service use among the thirty member countries. The United States spends more on health care than any other OECD country, yet its public spending as a share of GDP is comparable to several peers and its service use is below the OECD median, indicating that higher prices drive the spending gap.

Abstract

This paper uses the latest data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to compare the health systems of the thirty member countries in 2000. Total health spending—the distribution of public and private health spending in the OECD countries—is presented and discussed. U.S. public spending as a percentage of GDP (5.8 percent) is virtually identical to public spending in the United Kingdom, Italy, and Japan (5.9 percent each) and not much smaller than in Canada (6.5 percent). The paper also compares pharmaceutical spending, health system capacity, and use of medical services. The data show that the United States spends more on health care than any other country. However, on most measures of health services use, the United States is below the OECD median. These facts suggest that the difference in spending is caused mostly by higher prices for health care goods and services in the United States.