Health Care

In recent years, the health care systems in most industrialized countries have undergone considerable diagnostics and treatment by analysts and policy makers. The symptoms that prompted the attention were the large increases in health care expenditures as a percentage of GDP, the increase in real per capita health care expenditures and the rapid rise in the cost per unit of health care relative to increases for other goods, especially in the United States. The Netherlands and Germany, as well as the United Kingdom, exhibited the above symptoms to a lesser extent than the United States (see Figure 14.1) but they required considerable political effort to maintain control over health care budgets. Furthermore, there is the prospect of potential future increases in expenditures as a result of aging and more heterogeneous populations, increased affluence, and new technologies.