Ulf-G Gerdtham

TL;DR: Inequalities in health favoured the higher income groups and were statistically significant in all countries, and were particularly high in the United States and the United Kingdom.

TL;DR: There is an urgent need for public health measures to prevent obesity in order to save societal resources and international consensus is required on standardized methods to calculate the cost of obesity to improve homogeneity and comparability.

TL;DR: There is little or no evidence of significant inequity in the delivery of health care overall, though in half of the countries, significant pro-rich inequity emerges for physician contacts and in countries with very diverse characteristics regarding access and provider incentives.

TL;DR: It is found that the between-area variance in health tends to be lower in more egalitarian countries than in less egalitarian countries, and area level or contextual social capital may be less salient in egalitarian countries in explaining health differences across places.

TL;DR: Institutional factors of the health systems, in addition to per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP), contribute significantly to the explanation of thehealth care expenditure variation between countries; for example the way physicians in outpatient care are paid, and the mixture of public/private funding and inpatient/outpatient care.