This paper entitled "Public expenditure on health in local budgets" aims analysing and deepening major spending categories that public authorities finance at local level, namely health expenditure.

In the first part of the article we have specified the content and role of this category of expenditure in local budgets and also made some feedback on decentralization in health.

In the second part of the work, based on data available in Statistical Yearbook of Romania, we have carried out an analysis of the dynamics of health spending from local budgets to emphasize their place and role in the health care expenses.

 The research carried out follows that the evolution and structure of health expenditure financed from local budgets is determined, along with the legislative framework in the field, by several variables that differ from one territorial administrative unit to another: the existence of sanitary units, their type, the involving of local public authorities in their development and modernization, the number and the social structure of the population. The research shows that over the period 1993-2015, the dynamics of the share of health spending in total expenditures of local budgets is sinusoidal, with a minimum threshold in 2000 of only 0.3%.