3 - Healthcare Expenditure and Insurance Coverage

Summary

In the third chapter, some data are provided to explain the effects produced by the individual national financing systems, in terms of overall healthcare expenditure and insurance coverage of the population. The data reported confirm – both from a comparative and a diachronic perspective – that healthcare expenditure typically grows faster than GDP. The data concerning the insurance coverage of the population shows that many OECD countries do not provide healthcare coverage to the entire population. Considering all OECD countries, the uninsured total almost forty-nine million, corresponding to 3.7 percent of the population. Within EU countries, there are more than seven million uninsured (or 1.4 percent of EU residents).