Funding of Health Services

"NZ spends noticeably less per person on health than many of the other countries that we like to compare ourselves with, such as Germany, Austria, and Sweden, and as a consequence their health services are more comprehensive and impose less charges on patients.  One of the reasons for this gap is that we also collect less tax than those countries. With Labour unwilling to grow tax revenue and the National Party and ACT committed to tax cuts, how will the parties ensure that we can fund the public health services we know we need in the future?”

Answer

Facts to support the question:

Selected OECD Countries' total health spending per capita in PPP (purchasing power parity) international dollars (a hypothetical unit of currency that has the same purchasing power parity that the US dollar had in the US at a given point in time).

Not inflation-adjusted

Ranking

Country

2020 PPP international dollars

Ranking 

2022 PPP international dollars

3

Germany

6,939

3

8,011 (provisional)

6

Austria

5,883

6

7,275 (p)

8

Sweden

5,757

10

6,438 (p)

11

Australia

5,627

8

6,596 (estimate)

15

United Kingdom

5,019

17

5,493 (p)

19

New Zealand

4,469

14

6,061 (e)

 Source: https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm

Country

Tax % of GDP 2022

New Zealand

33.78

OECD average

34.11

Austria

42.83

Germany

39.51

Sweden

42.58

Source: OECD Data https://data.oecd.org)