ABSTRACT
The meaning of the word “health” depends on the general context of the discourse where it is used. It is certainly not the same for a physician, for an economist or for a person with a cold, an open fracture of the tibia or with a severe chronic invalidating disease. It has become fashionable to consider health, in economic terms, as a commodity among others, with neither less nor more hierarchy or importance than energy (electricity, gas, and so on), sports or sugar. It is therefore reasonable, from that point of view, to analyze the economic flows related to a given commodity, like health, using the ultimate comparison criteria, which is money. If we accept these premises, then we can consider health as comprising a series of activities, equipment, salaries, consumables, that represent a given use of economic resources leading to certain results, and analyze whether the economic resources have been used in a valid or efficient way to attain the results, also called outcomes.
