Health services are and have to be labour intensive. We cannot farm out the feeding and turning of our incapacitated elderly, or care of prematurely born infants, to Asia.
As medical science improves, people can live longer with more disabilities; we can keep people alive for longer in ITU etc of conditions they would have died of before. It's going to get costlier into the future (or should I say going forward?
.
Health Statistics from the OECD:
([broken link removed])
OECD Health Data 2006: Statistics and Indicators for 30 Countries
Total health spending accounted for 7.1% of GDP in Ireland in 2004, some way below the latest available
average of 8.9% across OECD countries. The United States is, by far, the country that spends the most on
health as a share of its economy, with 15.3% of its GDP allocated to health in 2004. Switzerland and
Germany followed with, respectively, 11.6% and 10.9% of their GDP spent on health. Several EU
countries - France, Belgium, Greece and Portugal – also devoted 10% or more of GDP to health in 2004.
In terms of health spending per capita, Ireland ranks just above the OECD average, with spending of 2596
USD in 2004 (adjusted for purchasing power parity) compared with an OECD average of about 2550 USD.
However, this is dwarfed in comparison with the United States (which spent 6102 USD per capita in 2004),
and significantly lower than some other big spenders, such as Luxembourg, Switzerland and Norway (with
spending from 4000 to 5000 USD)
Resources in the health sector (human, physical, technological)
Despite increasing numbers of doctors in recent years, Ireland continues to see a lower physician density
per capita than in many other OECD countries. In 2004, Ireland reported 2.8 physicians per 1 000
population. This figure is higher than in countries such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom
and Australia, but falls short of the OECD average of 3.0 and well behind some other European countries
such as France, Germany, Spain and Portugal, who all record 3.4 physicians per 1 000 population.
On the other hand, Ireland records a very high density of practising nurses, with 15 nurses per 1 000
population in 2004 (noting though that the comparability with other countries is more limited due to the
inclusion of different classes of nurses, mid-wives, etc.).
The number of acute care hospital beds in Ireland in 2004 was 2.9 per 1 000 population, below the OECD
average of 4.1 beds per 1 000 population. In most OECD countries including Ireland, the number of
hospital beds per capita has fallen over recent decades.