A comparison of the USA health care effort with other OECD countries *

We use a sample of OECD countries in order to better understand why the US health care expenditure as a per­ centage of its Gross Domestic Product («health care effort») is so far above any other. To this end we employ a descriptive cross-country methodology based partially on econometric estimations, synthetic indicators and the Lerner's formula of market power, that allows us to dismiss as explanatory variables all those factors that were not differential across the sample. We advance the exploratory hypothesis that the availability of a universal pu­ blic health coverage would increase the price elasticity of demand and thus would reduce the control of prices by the suppliers.