Davos, Jan 20 Amid rising costs and declining quality in healthcare systems worldwide, experts at the ongoing World Economic Forum (WEF) 2026 deliberated on the need to find solutions to break the cost-investment paradox.
During the session, ‘Healthcare: Cost or Investment’, experts discussed how healthcare systems worldwide face an inescapable paradox: spending rises while quality often declines.
Nina Warken, Germany’s Federal Minister of Health, stated that countries must have better healthcare facilities and must also finance them to enable citizens to live a healthy and disease-free life.
Stressing the need to gain citizens' trust in public healthcare, she said that “investment into healthcare is an investment into democracy”.
Stefanie Stantcheva, Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University, US, said that costs and investments into healthcare are unique.
“Public policies can play a big role in this because the private market struggles to support healthcare systems due to a range of externalities, which can also affect others,” Stantcheva said.
The experts also argued that framing healthcare solely as cost can obscure a critical reframe. Investment must be made in prevention, efficiency, and innovation, which can lead to healthier workforces, reduced emergency burdens, and increased economic productivity.
Suneeta Reddy, Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals Enterprise, stated that healthcare is an investment, and the returns can be measured in terms of health outcomes.
"India now has a vibrant healthcare system, but investments are imperative for the growth of the sector. Health investments can bring returns, as with higher volume, we are able to deliver clinical outcomes at scale. All this makes investment into healthcare a value proposition".
Bernd Montag, Chief Executive Officer, Siemens Healthineers, suggested that rising costs can be tackled with technology.
Montag called for “personalisation at scale”. But “this only works if we really smartly deploy technology from prevention to the right diagnosis to the therapy without multiplying the human factor in this process,” he said.
Further, Michel Demaré, Chair of the Board, AstraZeneca, argued for a long-term vision, conceding this was difficult when dealing with governments that are in power for four-year terms. He stressed, however, that taking a holistic and long-term approach would prove the only way.
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