Government spending on health care: a cross-national study of public attitudes

The economic constraints of the last decade have led western industrialized nations to consider, if not actually adopt, more stringent controls over costly social policies such as health care. Using recent, nationally representative data from the United States, Great Britain, West Germany, Italy and Australia, this paper provides an international comparison of attitudes towards government spending on health care. Attitudes are found to differ by country, with Great Britain being most supportive of increased spending and West Germany and the United States most opposed. Multiple regression techniques are used to determine significant socio-demographic and political ideological factors in relation to predicting attitudes towards government spending. In many countries, those who often bear the heavier tax burden, for example, the middle classes and those with higher status jobs, were consistently more likely to oppose an increase in government spending on health; compared with them, women were found to be more supportive of such action. Measures of political ideology were found to be quite consistent and strong predictors of attitudes--political conservatism and more negative attitudes towards government generally were inversely related to support for government increases in health spending. The policy implications of these findings are discussed in the conclusion.