[Do we spend too much on medications? Pharmaceutical expenditures, an absolutely essential item in European...

To find out if the performance of the pharmaceutical expenditure between the most developed European countries come close more to a luxury good or a necessary good. To compare the pharmaceutical Spanish expenditure with the one of those countries.

Cross-sectional study.

International. Europe.

European countries members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Union.

The data come from the OECD reports and other papers with the same source of information. The majority of the data refer to year 2000. The relationship between pharmaceutical expenditure and other variables as expenditure on health, on research and development (R&D), and socio-demographic variables are analysed with correlation and multiple linear regression.

In both groups of countries, the Gross Domestic Product per capita (GDPPC) is positively and significantly correlated with the expenditure per capita on health (public and total) and on R&D, but not with pharmaceutical expenditure per capita (PhEPC). The pharmaceutical expenditure as part of total expenditure on health (PhE/TE) or as percentage of GDP (PhE/GDP), is negatively and significantly correlated with income (GDPPC). The regression model accepts as explicative variables of PhE/GDP: the income (negatively), the employment in health (negatively) and the PhEPC (positively). The PhEPC in Spain is situated in the average of the most developed European countries, and expressed as PhE/TE or as PhE/GDP is situated in the group of the countries with greater pharmaceutical expenditure, the majority of them with a lower GDPPC to the Spanish one.

The performance of the pharmaceutical expenditure between the countries studied come close to a necessary good than to a luxury good. The PhEPC in Spain is situated in the average of these countries and, expressed as PhE/GDP or as PhE/TE, would be according to the Spanish income.