Table — Health spending in five countries, 2002

The table compares five countries in 2002 on three measures: the share of GDP devoted to health, health spending per head in US dollars, and the proportion of that spending met by the government.

Overall, the USA outspent the other four countries by a wide margin, relative to GDP and per head alike, while Mexico came last. However, high spending did not go hand in hand with high public funding: the state covered under half of the cost in those two countries but the great majority elsewhere.

The USA allocated 14.6% of its GDP to health, well ahead of second-placed Germany (10.9%), and this translated into 5,274 dollars per person, nearly double Germany's 2,817 dollars. Japan and the UK were closely matched, at 7.9% and 7.7% of GDP respectively, although the UK's per capita outlay was slightly higher (2,160 dollars against 2,077). Mexico lagged far behind: its 6.1% of GDP amounted to 553 dollars a head, roughly a tenth of the American figure.

For government funding, the order was quite different. The UK ranked first, with 83.4% of health costs paid by the state, followed by Japan (81.7%) and Germany (78.5%). In the USA, the public share was only 44.9%, a single percentage point above Mexico's 43.9% and little more than half the British level.