Modelling Australian public health expenditure

This paper describes the methodology used to impute the incidence of government health service expenditure onto NATSEM’s static microsimulation model, STINMOD. The modelling of public health expenditure allows the distribution of health benefits and the impact of health funding on living standards to be examined. Public health expenditure by all levels of government was allocated across the Australian population, using the most recent available health data and recent estimates of the socioeconomic composition of Australia’s population. Health sectors included were public hospital and other institutional services and benefits; medical practitioner and other clinical services; pharmaceutical benefits; and public health and health research.