uncertainty about future risk groups as well as healthrelated altruism contributes to a more robust public financing public funding will be harder to maintain the greater variability there is in disease risk the greater the proportion of the population that is at high risk of disease and the more costly the diagnosis and treatment of disease the role of the public sector in health care insurance and provision is significant in all developed countries and more prominent in the nordic countries than in most other countries hence the price mechanism will not fulfil its role of allocating resources to and within the health sector