碩士 逢甲大學 財稅所 94 In the past years, Taiwan and OECD countries are facing the same problem with the pressure of the continuous increase in the health care expenditure. In OECD countries, health care expenditure has been growing much more rapidly than GDP. Between 1970 and 2002 real health care expenditure grew 2.01 times faster than real GDP in the U.S., 1.83 times faster than real GDP in Germany, and 1.79 times faster than real GDP. In Taiwan, it grew 2.1 times faster than real GDP between 1980 and 2002. Finding the determinants of the health care expenditure is of great urgency. The data selected from Taiwan and 17 OECD countries for the period 1980 to 2002, including health expenditure per capita, GDP per capita, number of practicing physicians per thousand persons, the proportion population (proportion of population lower than 15 and proportion of population greater than 65), and medical progress, which is proxied by different variables, like infant mortality, life expectancy, health R&D expenditure and tota