Over the past few years, the Danish health system has improved. Yet when looking ahead, further pressures should be expected from new costly medical technologies expanding the range of conditions that can be treated, as well as from continued demand for shorter waiting times and care that responds to individual needs. Managing healthcare spending may well be the largest fiscal challenge over the coming decades. Sustaining universal public health insurance financed by general taxation should be feasible, but it will require continued efforts to enhance efficiency via organisational adjustments, refined economic incentives and the adoption of cost-saving treatment practices. At the same time, promoting healthy nutrition and lifestyles should have higher priority, and the system as a whole should be more engaged in helping to prevent people with health problems ending up being excluded from the labour market.