Should there be a ceiling on what percentage of GDP countries spend on health? No

doi:10.1136/bmj.a1036

Published 25 September 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a1036
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a1036

Head to Head

Should there be a ceiling on what percentage of GDP countries spend on health? No

Werner Christie, former minister of health

¹ Vidarshov gård, 2322 Ridabu, Norway

werner@vidarshov.no

Demands on healthcare budgets seem to be ever increasing. NickBosanquet (doi:10.1136/bmj.a1040) believes it is time to limitspending, but Werner Christie argues that it should reflectmedical needs not economic performance

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

There are several good reasons for not fixing health spendingto a varying gross domestic product (GDP). The funds we chooseto allocate to health care should reflect the comparative valuethat a health service represents for the population in relationto needs of other sectors, rather than GDP. The progress ofmedical science and an ageing population may increase both therelative benefit and cost of health care, requiring greaterexpenditure. Health care is labour intensive and therefore itscosts may increase more than those of other sectors of the economythat can more easily improve productivity through automationand technological progress, making current distribution of fundsinappropriate.

Health spending should reflect medical needs not unstable economictrends. Although suboptimal effectiveness and efficiency mayjustify temporary caps in further spending to provide necessarypressure for improvements and incentives to reduce slack, itdoes not legitimise the argument to . . . [Full text of this article]

Add to CiteULike CiteULike Add to Complore Complore Add to Connotea Connotea Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us Add to Digg Digg Add to Reddit Reddit Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon Add to Technorati Technorati Twitter What's this?