Population ageing and the growth in health care expenditures : a steepening study for the Portuguese case

Abstract

With general population ageing, the impact of age on health care expenditures has largely been discussed as predictions represent a threat to national health services. The term steepening refers to the fastest growth of per capita health care expenditures of the elderly, a phenomenon that if confirmed can cause unprecedented increases in public spending. The goal of this work is to test for the existence of steepening on Portuguese NHS hospital inpatient care episodes between2009and 2018. Initial results suggest a non-rejection of the stated hypothesis. With the inclusion of mortality, results on steepening are reduced indicating part of the increase in health care expenditures for older individuals is due to death-related costs.