Discrepancies in cancer incidence and mortality and its relationship to health expenditure in the 27 European Union member states

Background: The European Union (EU) is a confederation of 27 member states, the institutions of which work according to negotiated decisions. The EU has implemented similar legislation and a common market, and has adopted the same currency in most of its member states. Although financing health systems is a responsibility of the national governments, the EU has enacted the Charter of Fundamental Rights to standardize public health policies. However, for historical reasons, health policy and health expenditure is not uniform across the 27 EU member states (EU-27).

Material and methods: We hypothesized that increased health expenditure would be associated with better cancer outcome and that this would be most apparent in breast cancer, because of the availability of effective screening methods and treatments. Using publically available data from the World Health Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank, we assessed associations between cancer indicators and wealth and health indicators. To do so, we constructed scatter plots and used the Spearman's rank correlation coefficient.

Results: A marked difference in wealth and health expenditure indicators was observed between Eastern and Western European countries, with Western European being the higher. Higher wealth and higher health expenditures were associated both with increased cancer incidence and decreased cancer mortality. In breast cancer, the association with incidence was stronger. We created mortality/incidence ratios and observed that the more spent on health, the fewer the deaths after a cancer diagnosis.

Conclusion: Despite the initiatives to standardize public health policies of the EU-27, health expenditure continues to be higher in Western European countries and this is associated with better cancer outcome in these countries.