Health at a Glance 2011: OECD Indicators
WHY IS HEALTH SPENDING IN THE UNITED STATES SO HIGH?
1.
Health spending in the United States is much higher than in other OECD countries
The United States spends two-and-a-half times more than the OECD average health expenditure per person
(Chart 1). It even spends twice as much as France, for example, a country which is generally accepted as
having very good health services. At 17.4% of GDP in 2009, US health spending is half as much again as
any other country, and nearly twice the average.
Chart 1: Health expenditure per capita, public and private, 2009 (or nearest year)
0
132
99
862
United States
Norway
Switzerland
Netherlands ¹
Luxembourg ²
Canada
Denmark
Austria
Germany
France
Belgium ³
Ireland
Sweden
Iceland
United Kingdom
Australia
OECD
Finland
Italy
Spain
New Zealand
Japan
Greece
Slovenia
Portugal
Israel
Czech Republic
Slovak Republic
Korea
Hungary
Poland
Estonia
Chile
Russian Fed.
Brazil
Mexico
Turkey
South Africa
China
India
Indonesia
308
918
902
1036
943
1393
1186
1394
1879
2108
2084
2508
2983
2724
2165
1511
2000
Private expenditure on health
2878
3137
3067
3233
3226
3487
3445
3722
3538
3946
4218
3978
4348
4289
4808
5144
4914
4363
3781
4000
5352
6000
Public expenditure on health
2579
7960
USD PPP
8000
1. In the Netherlands, it is not possible to clearly distinguish the public and private share related to investments.
2. Health expenditure is for the insured population rather than the resident population.
3. Total expenditure excluding investments.
Note: Information on data for Israel: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/888932315602.
Source: OECD Health Data 2011.
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Health at a Glance 2011: OECD Indicators
Chart 2: Total health expenditure as a share of GDP, 2009 (or nearest year)
% of GDP
20
Private
17.4
18
Public
14
12
10
8
6
12.0
11.8
11.6
11.5
11.4
11.4
11.0
10.9
10.3
10.1
10.0
9.8
9.7
9.6
9.6
9.6
9.5
9.5
9.5
9.3
9.2
9.1
9.0
8.7
8.5
8.5
8.4
8.2
7.9
7.8
7.4
7.4
7.0
6.9
6.4
6.1
5.4
4.6
4.2
16
2.4
4
0
United States
Netherlands ¹
France
Germany
Denmark
Canada
Switzerland
Austria
Belgium ²
New Zealand
Portugal
Sweden
United Kingdom
Iceland
Greece
Norway
OECD
Ireland
Italy
Spain
Slovenia
Finland
Slovak Rep.
Brazil
Australia
Japan
South Africa
Chile
Czech Rep.
Israel
Luxembourg ³
Hungary
Poland
Estonia
Korea
Mexico
Turkey
Russian Fed.
China
India
Indonesia
2
1. In the Netherlands, it is not possible to clearly distinguish the public and private share related to investments. 2. Total
expenditure excluding investments. 3. Health expenditure is for the insured population rather than the resident population.
Note: Information on data for Israel: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/888932315602.
Source: OECD Health Data 2011.
Rich countries spend more than poor countries. Chart 3 shows that for nearly every country, if you know
how rich they are, you can predict their health spending per person per year to within a few hundred
dollars. The United States is an exception – Americans spend nearly $3000 per person per year more than
Swiss people, even though Swiss people have about the same level of income.
Chart 3: Total health expenditure per capita and GDP per capita, 2009 (or nearest year)
Health spending per capita (USD PPP)
8000
USA
R² = 0.71
7000
6000
NOR
CHE
5000
NLD
LUX
DNK CAN
AUT
DEU
FRA
BEL
IRL
SWE
4000
GBR
AUS
ITA
ISL
NZL ESP
FIN
GRC
JPN
PRT
SVN
CZE
SVK
ISR
3000
2000
HUN
CHL POL
BRA
1000
KOR
EST
RUS
TUR
ZAF MEX
CHN
IND
IDN
0
0
15000
30000
45000
60000
75000
90000
GDP per capita (USD PPP)
Source: OECD Health Data 2011.
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Health at a Glance 2011: OECD Indicators
2.
Where does the money go?
Health expenditure can be broken down into different categories of spending by type of care, that is, inpatient care, out-patient care, pharmaceuticals, public health and administration, etc. Chart 4 shows how
the US compares to other OECD countries that spend a lot on health, including countries with a lot of
private insurance (Switzerland, France and Germany).
Chart 4: Health spending per capita by category of care, US and selected OECD countries, 2009
USD PPP
$8,000
$7,000
Other
$7,598
(189%)
Public health & administration
$803
Pharmaceuticals and medical goods
(274%)
Ambulatory (Physicians, specialists, dentists, etc.)
Hospitals/Nursing homes
$1,070
$6,000
(152%)
$5,144
$5,000
$339
$463
$4,000
$2,803
$4,139
$4,072
(238%)
$434
$271
$298
$860
$887
$842
$1,171
$1,254
$1,062
$1,626
$3,000
$2,000
$2,832
$121
$466
$787
$2,922
$1,000
$3,872
(163%)
$2,716
$1,643
$1,518
$1,639
$1,458
Canada
Germany
France
Japan (2008)
$UNITED STATES
Switzerland
Note: Health spending excludes investments. The percentages in the US bar indicate how much more the US spends per category compared with
the average of the five other OECD countries.
Source: OECD Health Data 2011.




Hospital spending is higher than in the five other OECD countries, by over 60%.
Spending on Ambulatory care providers – that is, physicians and specialists as well as dentists, is much
higher than in the other OECD countries – almost two-and-a-half times the average of the other five
countries. One of the explanations for this is the growth of same-day surgery in the US. Such services
are an important innovation in health care delivery, often being preferred, when possible, by patients to
staying overnight in a hospital. Estimates of spending on same-day surgery performed by independent
physicians for 2003 and 2006 suggest that this has been the fastest growing area of health care over
this period (Mckinsey Global Institute, 2008).
Spending on Pharmaceuticals and medical goods is higher in the US than in any other country, but
overall accounts for a smaller share of total health spending than in the other countries.
Spending on Public Health and Administration is particularly high – more than two-and-a-half times
the average. Administration of the US health system alone accounts for about 7% share of total
spending. This is on a par with other systems such as France and Germany which also have multipayer
systems (even if in some of them there is no or little competition across payers). In comparison,
Canada and Japan devote around 4% of health spending on administration.
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Health at a Glance 2011: OECD Indicators
Leaving aside spending on administration, the high level of spending in the United States may be due to:



The cost (or price) of health care being higher in the United States than elsewhere
The United States providing more health care – more doctors’ appointments, more surgery, more
drugs, more diagnostic tests, longer stays in hospital – than in other countries
Some combination of the two.
Evidence suggests that prices are high (see next section) and some (but not all) quantities of services
provided are high.
3.
Are US health prices high?
A 2010 OECD study (Koechlin et al., 2010) found the US price level of hospital services to be over 60%
higher than the average of 12 other OECD countries in 2007.1
Looking at specific interventions, Table 1 shows that the price of a normal delivery in the United States
was estimated to be more than 50% higher than in France or Canada, while the price of a caesarean section
was 30% higher than in France and more than 50% higher than in Canada. The price of a knee
replacement was about 20% higher in the United States than in France and 50% higher than in Canada,
while a hip replacement costed 45% more in the United States than in these two countries.
Table 1: Average unit quasi-prices of certain hospital procedures, in US dollars, US and selected
OECD countries, 2007
Procedures
Appendectomy
Normal delivery
Caesarean section
Percutaneaous transluminal
coronary angioplasty (PTCA)
Coronary artery bypass graft
Hip replacement
Knee replacement
Source: Koechlin et al. (2010).
AUS
5 044
2 984
7 092
CAN
5 004
2 800
4 820
DEU
2 943
1 789
3 732
FIN
3 739
1 521
4 808
FRA
4 558
2 894
5 820
SWE
4 961
2 591
6 375
USA
7 962
4 451
7 449
7 131
9 277
3 347
5 574
7 027
9 296
14 378
21 698
15 918
14 608
22 694
11 983
9 910
14 067
8 899
10 011
23 468
10 834
9 931
23 126
11 162
12 424
21 218
11 568
10 348
34 358
17 406
14 946
Pharmaceutical prices are also higher in the United States than in other OECD countries. A recent study of
the 50 top-selling prescription drugs found that US pharmaceutical prices were at least 60% higher than
those in five large European countries in 2007.2
Overall, the evidence suggests that prices for health services and goods are substantially higher in the
United States than elsewhere. This is an important cause of higher health spending in the United States.
1
Koechlin, F., L. Lorenzoni and P. Schreyer (2010), Comparing Price Levels of Hospital Services across Countries:
Results of a Pilot Study, OECD Health Working Paper, No. 53, OECD Publishing, Paris.
2
Kanavos, P. and S. Vandoros (2011), Drugs US: are prices too high?, Significance, The Royal Statistical Society,
March 2011, pp.15-18.
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Health at a Glance 2011: OECD Indicators
4.
Does the US provide too much health care?
More health care is not always better health care – sometimes treatments are provided which are
unnecessary, or even undesirable. There are enormous differences in how much health care different
health systems supply. However, it is very difficult to say whether a country does too much, or too little.
But what can be done is to indicate whether the United States does more or less than other countries.
Table 2 shows where it does less. It does not have many physicians relative to its population; it does not
have a lot of doctor consultations; it does not have a lot of hospital beds, or hospitals stays, when compared
with other countries, and when people go to hospital, they do not stay for long. All these data on health
care activities suggest that US health spending should be low compared with other countries.
Table 2. Where the United States health system does LESS than other countries
United States
Rank compared with
OECD countries
26th
29th
29th
26th
29th
Practising physicians
2.4 per 1 000 population
Doctor consultations
3.9 per capita
Hospital beds
3.1 per 1 000 population
Hospital discharges
130.9 per 1 000 population
Average length of stay in 4.9 days
hospitals
Source: OECD Health Data 2011.
OECD average
3.1 per 1 000 population
6.5 per capita
4.9 per 1 000 population
158.1 per 1 000 population
7.2 days
On the other hand, the US health system does do a lot of interventions. Table 3 shows that it has a lot of
expensive diagnostic equipment, which it uses a lot. And it does a lot of elective surgery – the sort of
activities where it is not always clearcut about whether a particular intervention is necessary or not.
Table 3. Where the United States health system does MORE than other countries
United States
MRI units
25.9 per million population
MRI exams
91.2 per 1 000 population
CT scanners
34.3 per million population
CT exams
227.9 per 1 000 population
Tonsillectomy
254.4 per 100 000 population
Coronary angioplasty
377.2 per 100 000 population
Knee replacements
212.5 per 100 000 population
Caesarean sections
32.3 per 100 live births
Source: OECD Health Data 2011.
Rank compared with
OECD countries
2nd
2nd
5th
2nd
2nd
3rd
1st
8th
OECD average
12.2 per million population
46.6 per 1 000 population
22.8 per million population
131.8 per 1 000 population
133.8 per 100 000 population
187.6 per 100 000 population
118.4 per 100 000 population
25.8 per 100 live births
Hence overall the picture about whether the US spends more than other countries because its system does
more than other countries is mixed. It does more of some activities, but less of others. Overall, it seems
that high prices are probably a more important cause of high spending than high provision of services.
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Health at a Glance 2011: OECD Indicators
Box: Is the quality of US health care better than in other countries?
Life expectancy in the United States is below the OECD average (78.2; average is 79.5), despite the high level of health spending.
The United States is also below average on other measures, including infant mortality and potential years of life lost. However,
these ‘aggregate’ measures are not good measures of the effects of health spending on outcomes, as many other factors beyond
health care affect mortality.
Health at a Glance 2011 presents a set of indicators related more specifically to the quality of health care. The United States
performs well in some subsystems such as cancer care and treating acute conditions in hospitals, but does not perform well in
primary care and in preventing costly hospital admissions for chronic conditions.

Cancer care system is generally performing very well. This is particularly true for breast cancer with high
screening coverage and survival, and also for colorectal cancer (Charts 5 and 6). On the other hand, cervical cancer
survival is still low compared with many other OECD countries, despite the high screening coverage.

The quality of acute care in hospitals is generally good in the United States, compared with other OECD
countries. In-hospital case fatality for AMI and ischemic stroke is lower than the OECD average.

However, the primary care sector is still underdeveloped, adding financial burden to the health system. Costly
hospital admissions have been high particularly for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD),
even though such admissions could potentially be avoided if appropriate care is provided in primary care settings
(Charts 7 and 8). The shortage of family doctors contributes to the poor primary care performance.
Chart 5: Breast cancer, five-year relative survival rate
United States (2003-08)
Chart 6: Colorectal cancer, five-year relative survival rate
Japan (2000-05)
89.3
Japan (2000-05)
United States (2003-08)
87.3
Canada (2002-07)
68.0
86.6
64.5
Canada (2002-07)
63.4
OECD (16 countries)
83.5
Germany (2003-08)
60.4
Germany (2003-08)
83.3
OECD (16 countries)
59.9
France (1997-2002)
82.8
France (1997-2002)
United Kingdom (2004-09)
81.3
60
57.0
United Kingdom (2004-09)
70
80
90
100
Age-standardised rates (%)
53.3
40
50
60
70
80
Age-standardised rates (%)
Chart 7: Asthma hospital admission rates,
population aged 15 and over
Chart 8: COPD hospital admission rates,
population aged 15 and over
Canada (2009)
France (2007)
15.7
Italy (2009)
19.2
Italy (2009)
Germany (2009)
20.8
Canada (2009)
France (2007)
OECD (28 countries)
United Kingdom (2009)
United States (2008)
43.4
51.8
73.7
183
198
Germany (2009)
201
United States (2008)
0
50
100
150
Age-sex standardised rates per 100 000 population
126
OECD (28 countries)
United Kingdom (2009)
120.6
79
213
230
0
100
200
300
Age-sex standardised rates per 100 000 population
Note: 95% confidence intervals are represented by H.
Source: OECD Health Data 2011.
6