Only five countries in the EU spent less on health in 2020 – in total – than Poland. We are doing very badly when it comes to spending per capita, we are doing badly when analyzing the percentage of public spending - here we took the last place in the first year of the pandemic.
OECD: public spending on health in Poland below 5 percent. GDP
Published Dec. 6, 2022 08:12
Fot. Getty Images/iStockphoto
The OECD and the European Commission have published the report "Health at a Glance. Europe 2022”. Other European countries, not just EU members, are also included in the report.
Basic conclusion: Poland is one of the countries where current expenditure on health is among the lowest or in some aspects is even the lowest in the EU.
What is the total health expenditure per capita? The average for the EU is EUR 3,159, and in Poland - EUR 1,591. We are sixth from the bottom, narrowly ahead of Latvia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania, the latter spending €1,428. In the first year of the pandemic, the Czech Republic spent over one thousand euros more per capita than Poland. Of course, compared to several countries from southern Europe, we do quite well - especially against Albania (EUR 473).
In 2020, Germany spent the most on health in the EU (EUR 4,831), and Switzerland (EUR 4,997) spent the most in Europe. Norway was also on the podium (4,582), and more than 4,000 EUR were also spent by the Netherlands, Austria and Sweden.
The report compares the increases in spending on health in 2013-2019 (when most countries were rebuilding their spending after the financial crisis) and in 2019-2020. The first period is characterized by an EU average growth of 3 per cent, while in most Western European countries it was relatively low (even below 1 per cent), and more dynamic in Central and Eastern European countries. Poland performs relatively well in this ranking, with a result of 4.9 percent. being above average. However, we are far from the leader - in Latvia, Lithuania and Romania, spending on health increased by 7%, slightly less in Malta and Estonia.
The situation in 2019-2020, however, is completely different. Poland was among the countries (next to Slovakia and Belgium) where total per capita spending fell in the first year of the pandemic. Although not much (-0.7%), spending on average in the EU increased by 5.5% during this period. Bulgaria increased them by almost 20 percent!, and huge increases were also recorded in the Czech Republic (15.2 percent) and Hungary (11.4 percent). Nearly 10 percent was recorded by Ireland and Estonia, and from non-EU countries by the United Kingdom.
Key question: what percentage of GDP is spent on health? Combined, private and public, in the European Union in 2020 - 10.9 percent. In Poland - 6.5 percent. In this ranking, we are third, and in fact second from the bottom. We are ahead of Romania (6.3%) and Luxembourg (5.8%), whose presence in this ranking does not make sense due to the very high GDP and small number of inhabitants, and the fact that they receive treatment - especially hospital - in countries neighboring. How do we compare to the countries of our region? In 2020, the Czech Republic spent 9.2% of GDP on health. The GDP of the Baltic states - from 7.4 to 7.8 percent. At the same time, the level of public expenditure – it did not reach 5% of GDP. GDP – we have the lowest in the EU.
