Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Health policy
Figure 1 Life expectancy at birth and health spending per capita, 43 countries. Source: data
from OECD 2017, data as for chart 3.3, page 49, excluding South Africa.
There is also evidence that those who live in societies with more economic
inequality, regardless of their individual income or wealth, have poorer health
than those in more equal societies. 4 Therefore policies relating to early childhood
education, employment, and income distribution, which may be distant from the
health portfolio, can have a profound effect on people’s physical and mental health.
There is also evidence that once countries reach a high level of prosperity, and
have been able to afford significant spending on health care, additional spending
has diminishing returns. Figure 1, derived from Organisation for Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD) data for 43 middle- and high-income
countries, shows the relation between health spending per capita (predominantly
health care) and life expectancy, with certain countries, including Australia,
marked. Apart from the USA, all countries in the right-hand two-thirds of that
graph have much the same life expectancy, even though spending varies by a factor
of about two to one. The USA, it can be seen, does not appear to have achieved good
value-for-money spent on health care – an ongoing issue with dysfunctions in its
privatehealthinsurancemodel.
This is not to underplay the importance of devoting resources – government
or private – to health care, but it is a reminder that while policies to do with
health care command attention in the political arena, in high-income countries like
Australia people’s health is influenced by many policies other than those within the
health portfolio.
4 Wilkinson and Pickett 2009.
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