How effective is public health expenditure in improving overall health? A cross–country analysis

Determinants of Health Status and Public Policies Implications – Lessons for Romania

“…In a study on the performance of health services in the USA from the perspective of their expenses, Berwick and Hackbarth (2012) noticed that at least 1/3 of the resources used represent a loss whose elimination could support both the sustainability of Medicare and Medicaid expenditure and their stabilization, given that their increase of up to 20% of GDP is forecasted for the year 2020. The questionable performance of these budgetary health allocations in different systems is considered in other studies notorious and frequent (Self and Grabowski, 2003;Medeiros and Schwierz, 2015) since it also highlights the hardships of their assessment (Anderson and Hussey, 2001). When studying the efficiency of public health expenditure, other papers extend the research to 191 states (Tandon et al, 2000) and conclude that it is possible to improve the health services' performance without the increase of financial grants because all the states under analysis have usable maneuvering space.…”

Combination of Survival Analysis and Neural Networks to Relate Life Expectancy at Birth to Lifestyle, Environment, and Health Care Resources Indicators

“…Likewise, Thornton (2002) [12] concludes for the United States that additional medical care utilization is relatively ineffective in lowering mortality and increasing life expectancy, and thus that health care policy which focuses primarily on the provision of medical services and ignores larger economic and social considerations may do little to benefit the nation's health. Finally, Filmer and Pritchett (1997) [13] as well as Self and Grabowski (2003) [14] find that health care resources have no significant impact on the population health status. Controversy about the link between health care resources and health status could reflect measurement problems and/or the fact that health-care resources represent too broad a concept, with some components having a more marked impact on health status than others.…”

Health Status Determinants

“…Likewise, Thornton (2002) concludes for the United States that additional medical care utilisation is relatively ineffective in lowering mortality and increasing life expectancy, and thus that health care policy which focuses primarily on the provision of medical services and ignores larger economic and social considerations may do little to benefit the nation's health. Finally, Filmer and Pritchett (1997) as well as Self and Grabowski (2003) find that health care resources have no significant impact on the population health status. 31.…”

“…Several studies incorporate the share of public versus private funding in total health care financing, including Filmer and Pritchett (1997), Or (2000a) and Self and Grabowski (2003). Fogel (2004) argues that the health care system contributes to reduce morbidity (hip replacement, cataract surgery and so on) but not much to reduce mortality.…”

“…Previous empirical studies have selected different options. Educational attainment was used by Thornton (2002) and Self and Grabowski (2003). The average number of schooling was used by Or et al (2005) as well as by Puig-Junoy (1998).…”