ABSTRACT
US health care expenditures have been increasing at a higher rate than the overall growth in the economy during the 1980s. This chapter discusses patterns of health expenditures across several market-oriented countries over time, particularly as they relate to the US Only industrialized countries are included because their statistical collection systems are more developed. There have been many studies of the relationship between a country's health expenditure and its national income. Higher health expenditure is associated with a higher national income. To compare health care spending across countries, several measures of aggregate health care expenditures are used. These are nominal or the "dollar value" health care expenditures, health price-adjusted or "real" health care expenditures, and utilization per capita. Nominal health care expenditures represent the dollar value of those expenditures before any inflationary adjustments are made. Real health care expenditures attempt to adjust expenditures for the increases that are caused by pure health care price increases.
