The influence of health care spending on life expectancy

Abstract

Health care expenditures and life expectancy have both been rising in many countries, including in the Netherlands. However, it is unclear to what extent increased health care spending caused the increase in life expectancy. Establishing a causal link between health care expenditures and mortality is difficult for several reasons. In medicine, randomized clinical trials are the gold standard to demonstrate causality and thereby the effectiveness of clinical interventions. However, data from randomized trials are not available to estimate the influence of health care spending on life expectanc