THE DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH CARE EXPENDITURE IN SPAIN: A REEXAMINATION

Abstract

In this paper the main determinants of health care expenditure per capita in Spanish autonomous communities are analyzed. The coexistence of several models concerning the degree of spending power decentralization and financing systems converts Spain in a singular case, allowing to extract interesting conclusions for other countries in ways of decentralizing their health care system. Besides, our results allow to evaluate the incidence of some factors of over-cost underlined by the autonomous communities with a view to future changes in the autonomous communities financing model.