The given table illustrates the proportion of GDP allocated to healthcare in five nations, namely Japan, Italy, Germany, France, and the USA, in 2002.
Overall, France’s total health spending was higher than that of the other four countries, whereas Japan recorded the lowest figure. In addition, in all five countries, public spending on health considerably outweighed private spending.
In terms of the higher-spending nations, France accounted for the largest share of GDP, at 11.4%, followed closely by Germany and the USA, at 9.3% and 8.6% respectively. Regarding public expenditure on health, France came first again with 8.6% of GDP, compared to 7% in Germany and 6% in the USA. Private spending shared a similar pattern, with France, the USA and Germany outlaying 2.8%, 2.6% and 2.3% of GDP, respectively; these rates are very close to one another.
When it came to the remaining countries, Japan and Italy spent 7.7% and 7.2% of their GDP on health, respectively. Public spending made up for the majority of this expenditure in both nations, at 5.8% in Italy and 5.3% in Japan. For private health expenditure, the figure for Japan was lower than that of Italy (1.4% compared to 2.4% of GDP), which was also the lowest proportion recorded across all five countries.