ABSTRACT
Health services can be financed either through private expenditure or public expenditure. The economic crisis has led both developed and developing countries to search for ways of increasing efficiency, finding more revenue for the health services and keeping costs under control. The former are concerned to find ways to contain the cost, while developing countries are concerned to maintain expenditure and, if possible, increase it to implement ‘Health for All’ policies. The study of such data as are available indicates a number of clear trends in health expenditure when figures for a number of countries are examined. Ministers of health, committed to increase primary health care, were faced with the problem of trying to do so on sharply declining health budgets. Health services which are financed on a direct budget basis by government, central or local, have always been subject to cost containment, at least in theory.
