Health Care Expenditures in Nine Industrialized Counties, 1960–76

This article reports the findings of a study developed to compare health care costs in the United States with those of eight other industrially advanced countries over the period 1960-76. All of the countries studied were found to share with the United States the problem of increased health care spending that has outpaced inflation in other sectors of the economy and continues to consume a growing share of national resources. The American growth rate in these expenditures has, in fact, been lower than that of all the other countries. Though U.S. health care expenditures have traditionally been relatively high when measured as a share of gross national product, Canada outspent the United States in this respect during the 1960’s. In more recent years, West Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden have devoted a larger share of GNP to health care than has the United States.