Health Care Sustainability Backgrounder
Publication date:
Mon, 2012-01-23 Is Canada’s health care system sustainable? Critics of medicare point to increases in health spending as the harbinger of financial disaster. And they have a simple, seductive answer ready at hand — let the market fix health care. Both suggestions — that there is a crisis of sustainability, and that the market can fix it — are false. The critics have overstated their case. Canada’s health spending is increasing but stable, and in line with other comparable economies. The effect of our aging demographic is minor and slow-moving, while cost drivers with greater impacts, like prescription drugs and the use of technology, can be controlled.
