Estimates for total health spending capture the national aggregate of all spending on health goods and services for recurrent and capital purposes.
In 2019–20, Australia spent an estimated $202.5 billion on health. In real terms, this represented a 1.8% growth in spending from 2018–19, equating to an additional $3.5 billion (Figure 1). This real growth was lower than in 2018–19 (3.1%), higher than in 2017–18 (1.4%), but below the average of the recent 5-year period (2.7%), and below the average over the decade from 2009–10 (3.4%).
The main areas in which spending increased were:
- public hospitals, by $3.0 billion (noting that this is the current estimates, not taking into account some in-hospital MBS and PBS spending which is currently allocated to other areas, as detailed later in this report)
- unreferred medical services, by $0.7 billion
- benefit-paid pharmaceuticals, by $0.7 billion
- public health, by $0.7 billion.
Estimated spending on some other areas declined, including:
- dental services, by $0.8 billion
- private hospitals, by $0.6 billion
- other health practitioners, by $0.5 billion.
The areas of declining spending were most likely related to the lockdowns, restrictions and temporary suspension of non-urgent elective surgery in the first half year of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia.