In 2023, U.S. national health expenditure as a share of its gross domestic product (GDP) reached 17.6 percent, this was an increase on the previous year. The United States has the highest health spending based on GDP share among developed countries. Both public and private health spending in the U.S. is much higher than other developed countries. Why the U.S. pays so much moreWhile private health spending in Canada stays at around three percent and in Germany under two percent of the gross domestic product, it is nearly nine percent in the United States. Another reason for high costs can be found in physicians’ salaries, which are much higher in the U.S. than in other wealthy countries. A general practitioner in the U.S. earns nearly twice as much as the average physician in other high-income countries. Additionally, medicine spending per capita is also significantly higher in the United States. Finally, inflated health care administration costs are another of the predominant factors which make health care spending in the U.S. out of proportion. It is important to state that Americans do not pay more because they have a higher health care utilization, but mainly because of higher prices. Expected developmentsBy 2031, it is expected that health care spending in the U.S. will reach nearly one fifth of the nation’s gross domestic product. Or in dollar-terms, health care expenditures will accumulate to about seven trillion U.S. dollars in total.

Selection of time series of different scientific publications and of publication of the official statistics:

EUROSTAT, European Statistical Office OECD: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development; ONS: Office for National Statistics, England; SCB: Statistiska Centralbyran, Sweden; Federal Statistical Office, Wiesbaden. Deutschland; WHO: World Health Organization.

From 1950 to 1973, Italy's social and economic structure underwent its largest transformation in modern history. Following the Second World War, the Italian government's restrictive policies that prioritized agriculture and limited both migration and urbanization were scrapped, and mass industrialization took place. Not only did this result in millions flocking from the countryside to cities in search of work, but this coincided with the expansion of welfare, healthcare, and education systems, which provided further employment opportunities in service industries. Increased industrialization and consumerism also resulted in the growth of the retail sector (included in services), and all of these factors contributed to the drastic drop in agricultural employment. Despite agriculture's share of total employment dropping by 80 percent over these 23 years, mechanization and investment meant that agricultural output in the 1950s and 1960s generally grew as the industry became more efficient. Over these decades, Italy's status as a poor and underdeveloped, rural nation changed, as it emerged as one of the world's largest and fastest-growing economies, even becoming the fourth-largest economy in the world for a brief period in the 1980s.