ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a discussion of health expenditure in Australia, and has both descriptive and analytical components. The descriptive component is concerned with the behaviour and composition of health expenditures across countries and over time. It does not attempt to explain why health expenditures, in terms of either their level or their composition, differ between countries or fluctuate within a country over time. The analytical component takes this next step, considering hypotheses and arguments which are concerned with causality and which seek to deepen our understanding of what happens and why it happens. Ultimately, both components are necessary inputs in the formulation and implementation of informed health policy. The chapter deals with international comparison of health expenditures. Most of the pronounced growth in the publicly financed share of health expenditure in many countries occurred in the 1960s and the 70s.
