Abstract
Health spending has increased worldwide over the last decade and governments have seen this increase as unjustifiable and harmful both for the sustainability of health systems and for the financial system. This paper reviews the determinants of the relationship between total healthcare expenditure and GDP and the degree of impact of each determinant on the determination of total expenditure in health area in the countries of OECD.
A systematic review of papers published up until July 2018 was conducted. Search was performed on PubMed, Medline, Scopus, ScienceDirect and OECD data. The criteria for papers’ inclusion in this review were the demonstration of clear correlation between the determinants and healthcare expenditures.
According the results, only 30 of the retrieved scientific papers met the inclusion criteria, whereas 10 of them assessed the impact of correlation between GDP per capita and healthcare expenditures, 7 examined how ageing influence the healthcare expenditures, 4 showed how “proximity to death” react to healthcare costs and, finally, 9 studies showed how the technological growth leads to more healthcare expenditure.
In conclusion, GDP per capita is the leader determinant of healthcare expenditure. The determinants that follow are in line: ageing, technological change and proximity to death.
