Health spending in the OECD will rise to 11.8% of GDP in 2040 with lesson from covid

The weight of health spending in the countries of the OECD will continue to grow, as has been the case for decades and, if we add to this trend the lessons of the crisis of the covid To make the system more resistant, it will reach 11.2% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2040.

That is the projection of experts from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), who in a report published this Thursday recall that in 2019, the year before the outbreak of covid, it represented a 9% of GDP and a 7% in 2000.

The authors of the study point out that previous analyzes have estimated that on average one would have to dedicate 1.4% more GDP to prepare the health system for future shocks, in view of the experience of what happened with the coronavirus.

The combination of this adaptation with the increase in health spending that has been observed in recent years, due to the increase in the population’s income, technological innovation and aging, leads to the 11.2% of GDP on average in 2040.

To make this future reality sustainable from a fiscal point of view, the OECD considers that a “urgent action”and explores four options in particular.

It is about increasing public spending to dedicate it to health; increase the weight of health in current budgets; increase the share of private contributions to the detriment of public contributions and seek greater efficiency in spending.

Regarding the latter, experts estimate a savings potential of the equivalent of 1.2 percentage points of GDP, which would allow total health spending to be limited to 10.6% in 2040.

To do this, it would be necessary to encourage improvements in the population’s health, with measures such as preventive medicine, and promote policies that eliminate items that are inefficient and that the OECD itself has identified in the past.