Health care expenditures: international comparisons, 1970-80

This article is based on the findings of a study developed to compare health care costs in the United States during 1970-80 with those of six other industrially advanced countries--Canada, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Although health care expenditures in the United States have traditionally been relatively high, as a share of gross national product, they were exceeded in 1980 in West Germany and Sweden and equaled by the Netherlands. All the countries experienced increases in health care spending that outpaced inflation in other sectors of the economy. For the decade as a whole, the United States encountered a slower rate of growth than most of the other countries, both in terms of actual expenditures and when adjusted for inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index. As the decade progressed, however, most of the other countries succeeded in slowing their rate of increase to a greater degree than did the United States. The data also suggest that wage inflation was less of a factor in raising the cost of health care in the United States than was the case in most of the other countries.