The effectiveness of health care finance in promoting health: does the condition of health get better by spending more

Abstract

Medical research in the United States remains a global reference, endowed with unrivalled financing, a source of endless advancements, and recognized with many accolades; with 45 per cent of the winners, the United States outrageously dominates the Nobel Prize for Medicine. The volume of health spending in the United States is far more than any other country; however, the health outcomes are far below expectation. An American child Born in 2016 will live on average 78.6 years, which places the country around the thirty-fifth place in the world, somewhere between Cuba and Qatar; the United States has other modest results, as evidenced by the ranking of countries in terms of infant mortality in 2015, which placed the country 33^rd out of 35 member countries, ahead of only Turkey and Mexico. Although the United States ranks 35th out of 190 countries based on infant mortality in 2015, it is still far behind Cuba, which was 30^th and the first "non-high" income country. In 2016, US health expenditures/gross domestic product (GDP) exceeded 16%, with an average of 10,000 USD/inhabitants, while Cuban health expenditures/GDP did not exceed 11% during the same period. We aim through the present work to show that the state of health doesn't improve by spending more. However, it improves by spending more on programs that we know from the evidence can improve health outcomes.