The effect of health care expenditure on sickness absence.

Increased health care expenditure could be used to improve quality of care or reduce waiting time and could therefore be expected to affect the health and sickness absence of a population. Still, based on data from a panel of Swedish municipalities, public health care expenditure was found to have no, or only a negligible effect on absence due to sickness or disability. The same result was obtained when separate estimates were done for men and women and for absence due to sickness and disability.