How Much Should We Spend on Health Services

This paper considers five questions relating to the cost of health services. These are: (1) What is causing the growth of health care expenditures? (2) Why do we limit resource use in health care? (3) How much should we spend on health services? (4) What is the value of a human life? (5) What are the equity and ethical issues which must be resolved before a satisfactory answer to the fourth question can be given? The paper concludes that there are no satisfactory answers to these questions and even the importance of the ethical questions is often not recognised.