Health outcomes and the quality of health care in Iceland are very good by international comparison, while income-related health inequality appears to be smaller than in most other countries. However, the health-care system is costly and, according to OECD estimates, public expenditure on health...

An ambitious reform to increase efficiency of the Portuguese health care system was launched in 2002. In contrast to previous attempts of gradual reforms, which were never fully implemented, the strategy has been to create a big bang in the health sector, making changes essentially irreversible....

This paper assesses the performance of the United States health system in an international context and discusses potential directions for reform. The US health system is unique among OECD countries in its heavy reliance on the private sector for both financing and delivery of health care. The...

There are no ready-made data on hospital outputs and inputs which would allow comprehensive international comparisons of hospital efficiency to be carried out. This paper, therefore, relies on selected evidence to compare hospital efficiency in a subset of OECD countries, based on three...

This paper proposes a comprehensive framework for projecting public heath and long-term care expenditures. Notably, it considers the impact of demographic and non-demographic effects for both health and long-term care. Compared with other studies, the paper extends the demographic drivers by...

A key policy challenge in most OECD countries is to improve outcomes of the health care system while containing its costs. Benchmarking countries and identifying best practices to enhance public spending cost-effectiveness would, in this regard, be a useful exercise. This paper presents three...

This paper aims to shed light on the contribution of health care and other determinants to the health status of the population and to provide evidence on whether or not health care resources are producing similar value for money across OECD countries. First, it discusses the pros and cons of...

This paper examines the prospects for reform of Russia’s healthcare system. It begins by exploring a number of fundamental imbalances that characterise the current half-reformed system of healthcare provision before going on to assess the government’s plans for going ahead with healthcare...

In spite of improvements, on various measures of health outcomes the United States appears to rank relatively poorly among OECD countries. Health expenditures, in contrast, are significantly higher than in any other OECD country. While there are factors beyond the health-care system itself that...

The government’s health reform programme since 2000 has covered many aspects of the organisation of health care and was accompanied by a sizeable increase in spending on healthcare. Many of these reforms have the potential to improve the efficiency and responsiveness of the health care system...