The effects of health on economic development have been discussed in depth in the literature. Most of the findings have shown that the economic performance of a country can be enhanced by improving the health of the citizens. This paper investigates the causal link between health and economic development of high-income economies of selected OIC countries. Since these countries also have high expenditure on health in comparison with other OIC countries, the findings would give some indication of the importance of having high spending in health for the economic wellbeing of a country. The Toda-Yamamoto Granger non-causality model was used on data spanning from 1970 to 2015, and the results showed mixed causal relationships. Specifically, some countries like Bahrain and Kuwait have a health condition that boosts economic development, while Saudi Arabia experiences the opposite effect. However, health and economic development have bidirectional causality in the United Arab Emirates, while Brunei, Oman and Qatar do not show any causal direction between health and economic development. The findings give some evidence of the importance of health on economic prosperity without disregarding the fact that economic development is also important for good health.

The upsurge and control of healthcare expenditure growth are becoming a thought-provoking issue for numerous governments globally in spite of the fact that health is one of the superseding fundamentals of physical condition. Nevertheless, with the growing rate of an ageing population and increasing prolonged health difficulties, the protection of the quality of life demands better health spending on the part of the government. Generally, there are huge variances on the dimensions of monetary obligation nations dedicate to health. In this regard, this paper aims to project a long-term expenditure growth in health care service as it is believed that the outcome of this paper will contribute and suggest a policy direction to the government and concern organizations on the effective management of healthcare system. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).