Mortality reductions from marginal increases in public spending on health.
Health Policy
; 122(8): 892-899, 2018 08.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-29759682
ABSTRACT
There is limited empirical evidence of the nature of any relationship between health spending and health outcomes in Australia. We address this by estimating the elasticity of health outcomes with respect to public healthcare spending using an instrumental variable (IV) approach to account for endogeneity of healthcare spending to health outcomes. Results suggest that, based on the conditional mean, a 1% increase in public health spending was associated with a 2.2% (pâ¯<â¯0.05) reduction in the number of standardised Years of Life Lost (YLL). Sensitivity analyses and robustness checks supported this conclusion. Further exploration using IV quantile regression indicated that marginal returns on public health spending were significantly greater for areas with poorer health outcomes compared to areas with better health outcomes. On average, marginal increases in public health spending reduce YLL, but areas with poorer health outcomes have the greatest potential to benefit from the same marginal increase in public health spending compared to areas with better health outcomes. Understanding the relationship between health spending and outcomes and how this differs according to baseline health outcomes can help meet dual policy objectives to improve the productivity of the healthcare system and reduce inequity.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Mortality
/
Outcome Assessment, Health Care
/
Health Expenditures
/
Financing, Government
Type of study:
Health_economic_evaluation
/
Prognostic_studies
/
Risk_factors_studies
Aspects:
Patient_preference
Limits:
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
Oceania
Language:
En
Journal:
Health Policy
Journal subject:
PESQUISA EM SERVICOS DE SAUDE
/
SAUDE PUBLICA
Year:
2018
Document type:
Article