Health Expenditure Australia 2005/06

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has released a new report: Health expenditure Australia 2005-06.

This report examines expenditure on health goods and services in Australia for 1995-96 to 2005-06. It shows that Australia spent over $86.9 billion on health in 2005-06, an estimated rise of $5.8 billion since 2004-05.

The following extracts from the report will be of interest to members:
"In 2005–06, public hospital services and medical services received the highest amounts of government funding for recurrent expenditure ($22.5 billion and $12.2 billion respectively) (Table 15). In contrast, dental services and other health practitioners received $995 million and $711 million respectively."

"Individuals funded 66.9% of the $5.3 billion spent on dental services in 2005–06 (Table A3). For the period 2003–04 to 2005–06, real growth in dental services expenditure averaged 1.9% per year—1.9 percentage points below the annual real growth in total recurrent health expenditure of 3.8% (Table A8). In nominal terms, average annual growth for dental services expenditure was 7.2% during this period, 1.0 percentage points lower than the growth for total recurrent health expenditure of 8.2% (Table A7)."

The report presents expenditure estimates: at the aggregate level; as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP); on a per person basis; by state and territory; by comparison with selected OECD and Asia-Pacific countries; and by source of funding-Australian Government, other governments and the non-government sector.

Click on the link to view the media release and report.