Total Health Spending, USD PPP Per Capita (2019): $3,649

(Note: “Health spending measures the final consumption of health care goods and services (i.e. current health expenditure) including personal health care (curative care, rehabilitative care, long-term care, ancillary services and medical goods) and collective services (prevention and public health services as well as health administration), but excluding spending on investments. Health care is financed through a mix of financing arrangements including government spending and compulsory health insurance (“Government/compulsory”) as well as voluntary health insurance and private funds such as households’ out-of-pocket payments, NGOs and private corporations (“Voluntary”). This indicator is presented as a total and by type of financing (“Government/compulsory”, “Voluntary”, “Out-of-pocket”) and is measured as a share of GDP, as a share of total health spending and in USD per capita (using economy-wide PPPs).”

Source: OECD (2021), Health spending (indicator). doi: 10.1787/8643de7e-en (Accessed on 20 January 2021).

Current Health Expenditure Per Capita (USD) (2016): $2,739
Current Health Expenditure as Percentage of Gross Domestic Product (%) (2016): 8.9%
Domestic General Government Health Expenditure as Percentage of General Government Expenditure (%) (2016): 13.5%
Population with household expenditures on health greater than 10% of total household expenditure or income (2009-2015) (%): 9.3%
Population with household expenditures on health greater than 25% of total household expenditure or income (2009-2015) (%): 1.1%

Source: World health statistics 2019: monitoring health for the SDGs, sustainable development goals. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2019. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.

Annual out-of-pocket payment, constant USD PPP per capita (2017): $850

Source: Global Health Expenditure Database. Health expenditure series. Geneva: World Health Organization. Last accessed Oct. 6, 2020.

Out-of-Pocket Spending as Share of Final Household Consumption (%) (2017): 3.4%

Source: OECD (2019), Health at a Glance 2019: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/4dd50c09-en.

“In 2017, Italy spent 8.8 % of its GDP on health care, a lower share than the EU average of 9.8 %. In per capita terms, health expenditure amounted to EUR 2,483 (adjusted for differences in purchasing power), more than 10 % below the EU average of EUR 2,884 (Figure 7). Following the economic crisis in 2009, health spending per capita fell until 2013, after which it started to increase again at least moderately.

“Public spending accounted for 74 % of health expenditure in 2017 (or 6.5 % of GDP). Although the basic benefit package covers a wide range of services, direct out-of-pocket (OOP) payments by households are relatively high (24 %), making up most of the remaining expenses. Private health insurance plays a minor role, covering only about 2 % of total health expenditure.”

Source: OECD/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies (2019), Italy: Country Health Profile 2019, State of Health in the EU, OECD Publishing, Paris/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, Brussels.

“Public sources made up 78.2% of total health-care spending, with private spending, mainly in the form of OOP payments (17.8%), accounting for the remainder – these OOP payments are mainly for diagnostic procedures (laboratory tests and imaging), pharmaceuticals, specialist visits and for unjustified (non-urgent) interventions provided in hospital emergency departments. Only about 1% of total health-care expenditure is funded by private health insurance. The production, distribution and pricing of pharmaceuticals are strictly regulated by a national agency, and provisions are made progressively more complex by repeated attempts at cost containment of pharmaceutical expenditure.”

Source: Ferré F, de Belvis AG, Valerio L, Longhi S, Lazzari A, Fattore G, Ricciardi W, Maresso A. Italy: Health System Review. Health Systems in Transition, 2014, 16(4):1–168.

“In Italy, as in most OECD countries, health expenditure has steadily increased over time, making its containment a major issue for governments. However, it is noteworthy that public health-care expenditure remained virtually unchanged between 2010 and 2012 (with a +1.1% average yearly change). The recent history of health-care expenditure is marked by attempts to place stricter control over regions’ health spending after a few regions incurred considerable deficits. To address this financial failure, the government introduced a special regime for overspending regions that requires the adoption and implementation of formal regional ‘financial recovery plans’ (Piani di Rientro). Since 2007, ten⁴ out of the twenty-one regional health systems have adopted these plans, which include actions to address the structural determinants of costs. All subsequent dynamics of public spending for health care must be seen in light of these provisions. The overall effect of this regime has been a decrease in the yearly level of overspending. In 2012, the total deficit of the public health-care sector was €1.04 billion, declining by 77% since 2006 (€4.48 billion) (Armeni & Ferré, 2013).

“Total health expenditure (public and private) exceeded €140 billion in 2012 (9.2% of GDP) (Table 3.1), growing at a yearly average5 of 4.7% from 2000 to 2009 and by only 0.9% from 2009 to 2012. Since 2000, total health-care expenditure has increased by 1.3 percentage points of GDP (from 7.7% in 2000 to 9% in 2010), mainly because the public component has experienced rates of increase that are substantially higher than GDP. Only in the last three years (2010–2012) has the increase in public health-care expenditure been radically contained; thus, the ratio of total health-care expenditure to GDP has been stabilized.”

Source: Ferré F, de Belvis AG, Valerio L, Longhi S, Lazzari A, Fattore G, Ricciardi W, Maresso A. Italy: Health System Review. Health Systems in Transition, 2014, 16(4):1–168.

Health Systems Facts is a project of the Real Reporting Foundation. We provide reliable statistics and other data from authoritative sources regarding health systems in the US and several other nations.

Page last updated April 20, 2021 by Doug McVay, Editor.