Nghiem Son Hong, Connelly Luke Brian
The Australian Research Centre for Health Services Innovation, Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, School of Public Health and Social Work, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD 4059, Kelvin Grove, Australia.
Centre for the Business and Economics of Health, Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia.
Health Econ Rev. 2017 Aug 17;7(1):29. doi: 10.1186/s13561-017-0164-4.
This study examines the trend and determinants of health expenditures in OECD countries over the 1975-2004 period. Based on recent developments in the economic growth literature we propose and test the hypothesis that health care expenditures in countries of similar economic development level may converge. We hypothesise that the main drivers for growth in health care costs include: aging population, technological progress and health insurance. The results reveal no evidence that health expenditures among OECD countries converge. Nevertheless, there is evidence of convergence among three sub-groups of countries. We found that the main driver of health expenditure is technological progress. Our results also suggest that health care is a (national) necessity, not a luxury good as some other studies in this field have found.
本研究考察了经合组织国家在1975年至2004年期间医疗支出的趋势及其决定因素。基于经济增长文献中的最新进展，我们提出并检验了这样一个假设：经济发展水平相似的国家之间的医疗保健支出可能会趋同。我们假设医疗成本增长的主要驱动因素包括：人口老龄化、技术进步和医疗保险。结果显示，没有证据表明经合组织国家之间的医疗支出会趋同。然而，有证据表明在三个国家子群体中存在趋同现象。我们发现，医疗支出的主要驱动因素是技术进步。我们的研究结果还表明，医疗保健是一种（国民）必需品，而不是像该领域其他一些研究所发现的那样是一种奢侈品。
