Latest OECD figures on health spending show that health spending grew by 2.5% in 2018 with provisional estimates pointing to around 2.4% growth in 2019. OECD spending on health as a share of GDP has remained at around 8.8% on average since 2017, according to OECD Health Statistics 2020, updated in November 2020.

The OECD Manual A System of Health Accounts (SHA, revised edition March 2017) provides a standard framework for producing a set of comprehensive, consistent and internationally comparable accounts to meet the needs of public and private-sector health analysts and policy-makers.

Preliminary OECD estimates for 2018 point to health spending growth of around 2.5% in 2018. Health spending as a share of GDP is expected to have remained at 8.8% in 2018. At 17.1% of GDP, health spending in 2017 was highest in the United States, and significantly more than Switzerland (12.3%) and France (11.3%), the second and third highest spenders. At the other end of the scale, Turkey (4.2%), Luxembourg (5.5%) and Mexico (5.5%) were the lowest spenders in terms of share of GDP.On average, more than 70% of health spending is funded out of public resources – from government revenues (primarily tax income) and social insurance contributions. This share was particularly high in Norway and Luxembourg (85% of total spending), and lowest in Switzerland (financing less than a third of overall spending). 

• Read the Policy Brief Public funding of health care - February 2020

This and other issues, such as the effects of an ageing population, or tracking, have been challenging the traditional system of health expenditure statistics.

Despite the post-crisis slowdown in health spending growth, concerns about the fiscal sustainability of health systems remain large. The publication Fiscal Sustainability of Health Systems: Bridging Health and Finance Perspectives provides a detailed overview of institutional frameworks for financing health care in OECD countries. It offers a comprehensive mapping of budgeting practices and governance structures in health across OECD countries.