This graph compares how different European nations spend the sum of their wealth in healthcare, comparing them roughly through the course of a decade with three arbitrary checkpoints – every five years, being the years of 2002, 2007 and 2012. Even though the data does not show dramatic changes over time, it’s a valid tool to evaluate how each country addresses the importance of this sector within its borders.
On that note, it is safe to assume that during that period, these twelve nations had quite a stable expenditure of their gross domestic product in healthcare, which varies, on average, from 6 to 8 percent of their total annual wealth. Although Estonia had the smallest percentage of them all, without knowing the absolute value of its GDP, it is not correct to conclude it has the smallest annual investment in this sample. The Netherlands was the only country that had a progressive, although subtle, decrease in their investment in the health sector, going from 9 to 8 percent at the end of the observation. Belgium, Spain, and Switzerland were the only countries that appeared to have a solid and stable portion of their wealth invested in this area throughout the period, whilst the remaining nations fluctuated their expenses, being the example of the French the clearest, with an increase in 2007 followed by a cut of 1 percent at the end of observation, the largest fluctuation of them all.
Lastly, although forementioned that these data were quite nonconclusive towards remarkable changes in general, it shows that the trend of these European nations towards investment in their healthcare sectors was quite stable over the course of the first decade of the twenty-first century, implying that it plays a vital role in their internal politics.