Abstract. The health systems consume a lot of resources. In the last thirty years, there was registered a continuous increase of the necessary resources’ level. This increase was mainly due to: the ageing of the population, discovery of more efficient medicines and of more advanced and costly technologies, the increase of the number of persons who benefits by medical assistance.

Theoretically, the financial supporting could be upgraded by help of a series of measures: restriction of the access to services, reduction of the quality of the services or increase of the private financing weight (which has consequences connected to the limitation of the access to services). None of these is desired from social point of view.

From social perspective, the most indicated modality of upgrading the financial supporting is the efficient increase of the health system. In this situation, the efficiency makes reference to the decrease of costs, maintaining at the same level the quantity and quality, achieved by preventing the overconsumption (which could be connected to oversupply) of medical services and assignment of sufficient resources for the prevention and health maintenance programs with the purpose to reduce some future potential expenses. The performed comparisons between different international experiences based on the resulted/expenses rapport could represent a useful guide referring to the efficiency.

Keywords: health and inequality; efficiency; crisis; quality of life; sustainability.