Fraser Institute
Here’s your annual bill for public health care
From the Fraser Institute
Notably, the amount paid by the average family has increased by 239.7 per cent since 1997 (the first year of available data).
According to a recent survey by Statistics Canada, almost half of Canadians said that rising prices are affecting their ability to meet day-to-day expenses. At the same time, Canadians are increasingly aware of their significant tax burden, with 74 per cent feeling the average family is overtaxed. This is not surprising given the average Canadian family spends more on taxes than food, clothing and shelter combined.
However, one contributor to this growing tax burden remains hidden—the price we pay public health care. You read that right. Public health care is not free—but it’s very difficult to figure out exactly how much we pay for it on an individual or family basis.
This is primarily because our public health-care system is funded through general government revenues. In other words, there’s no dedicated tax that fully funds the system. Our income taxes, sales taxes, business taxes and other taxes get poured into a fiscal vat, from which governments take a generous portion for health care.
While it’s easy enough to gauge total health-care spending by governments ($225.1 billion) or how much was spent per Canadian ($5,614), it remains nearly impossible for Canadian families of different sizes and incomes to calculate how much they contribute towards that vast amount.
But a recent study helps us get a general idea. According to the study, an average family of four (two parents and two children) with an average income of $176,266 will pay an estimated $17,713 (in taxes) for public health care this year. Single Canadians, with an average income of $55,925, will pay $5,629. Of course, these amounts vary by income with the poorest 10 per cent of income earners paying $639 while the top 10 per cent pay $47,071.
Notably, the amount paid by the average family has increased by 239.7 per cent since 1997 (the first year of available data). This increase is 3.1 times greater than the rate of inflation, 2.2 times greater than food cost increases, and 1.6 times greater than housing costs increases. And crucially, the cost of public health care for the average family has increased 1.7 times faster than their average incomes grew during the same period.
These figures are not only important for families who are interested in how their tax dollars are spent, they are one very important side of the equation when trying to understand whether we receive good value for our health-care dollars. Moreover, as politicians continue to promise ever increasing health-care spending to fix our crumbling system, it’s crucial for Canadians to understand exactly how that spending impacts their wallets.
One thing is clear. With nearly an $18,000 price tag for the average family of four, Canada’s public health-care system is anything but free.
Author:
From the Fraser Institute
By Nadeem Esmail and Tegan Hill
The Smith government may soon allow Albertans to privately purchase diagnostic screening and testing services, prompting familiar cries from defenders of the status quo. But in reality, this change, which the government plans to propose in the legislature in the coming months, would simply give Albertans an option already available to patients in every other developed country with universal health care.
It’s important for Albertans and indeed all Canadians to understand the unique nature of our health-care system. In every one of the 30 other developed countries with universal health care, patients are free to seek care on their own terms with their own resources when the universal system is unwilling or unable to satisfy their needs. Whether to access care with shorter wait times and a more rapid return to full health, to access more personalized services or meet a personal health need, or to access new advances in medical technology. But not in Canada.
That prohibition has not served Albertans well. Despite being one of the highest-spending provinces in one of the most expensive universal health-care systems in the developed world, Albertans endure some of the longest wait times for health care and some of the worst availability of advanced diagnostic and medical technologies including MRI machines and CT scanners.
Introducing new medical technologies is a costly endeavour, which requires money and the actual equipment, but also the proficiency, knowledge and expertise to use it properly. By allowing Albertans to privately purchase diagnostic screening and testing services, the Smith government would encourage private providers to make these technologies available and develop the requisite knowledge.
Obviously, these new providers would improve access to these services for all Alberta patients—first for those willing to pay for them, and then for patients in the public system. In other words, adding providers to the health-care system expands the supply of these services, which will reduce wait times for everyone, not just those using private clinics. And relief can’t come soon enough. In Alberta, in 2024 the median wait time for a CT scan was 12 weeks and 24 weeks for an MRI.
Greater access and shorter wait times will also benefit Albertans concerned about their future health or preventative care. When these Albertans can quickly access a private provider, their appointments may lead to the early discovery of medical problems. Early detection can improve health outcomes and reduce the amount of public health-care resources these Albertans may ultimately use in the future. And that means more resources available for all other patients, to the benefit of all Albertans including those unable to access the private option.
Opponents of this approach argue that it’s a move towards two-tier health care, which will drain resources from the public system, or that this is “American-style” health care. But these arguments ignore that private alternatives benefit all patients in universal health-care systems in the rest of the developed world. For example, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands and Australia all have higher-performing universal systems that provide more timely care because of—not despite—the private options available to patients.
In reality, the Smith government’s plan to allow Albertans to privately purchase diagnostic screening and testing services is a small step in the right direction to reduce wait times and improve health-care access in the province. In fact, the proposal doesn’t go far enough—the government should allow Albertans to purchase physician appointments and surgeries privately, too. Hopefully the Smith government continues to reform the province’s health-care system, despite ill-informed objections, with all patients in mind.
Nadeem Esmail
Tegan Hill
From the Fraser Institute
The Carney government will table its long-awaited first budget tooday. The vote on the budget is expected to be a confidence vote, so the stakes are high. Everyone is speculating about what’s to be in it. CBC, the Toronto Sun and Global News are all reading the tea leaves. And I hate to miss a tea party.
The budget is, naturally, going to have major implications for Canada’s economic indicators of debt, deficit, spending, governmental expansion/contraction, and so on. I’ll leave all that macroeconomics to my colleagues at Fraser Institute. But Prime Minister Carney has made some specific claims in my areas of specialty (environment, natural resources and regulation), and has made noises about Canada becoming an “energy superpower” and “building things” again. He’s also, in speeches leading up to the budget, re-affirmed that the Trudeau-era climate-change-centric, carbon-emission-control mindset is unchanged. The wording has changed, but the focus and predicates remain. Now though, rather than pounding on terms such as carbon, greenhouse and climate change, it’s all about Canadian policy being “responsible,” “sustainable,” “moral” and “equitable.”
Here’s what I’ll look for in the budget.
First, will the government dismantle or reform bills C-48, C-69 and the oil and gas emission cap—the three-pronged trident of death for major oil and gas development in Canada? Without this, it will be difficult to take any of his talk of energy superpower or natural resource trade renaissance seriously.
Second, will the government renounce or seriously reform the economically irrational, unattainable and crippling “net-zero 2050” anti-carbon agenda and shift Canada’s climate policy from emissions abatement to something potentially more attainable, such as adaptation and resilience building? Will it free Canada’s carbon natural resource economy to be the engine of Canadian prosperity and international competitiveness once again? Or keep Canada’s carbon (oil and gas) economy (and manufacturing economy) on a path toward extinction?
Third, will the government reset the tone of Canadian culture and defuse some of the adversarial relations with resource-rich provinces by acknowledging that Canada’s natural-resource economy has been, is now and must continue to be a cornerstone in Canada’s total economy? Or will it stick to the “net-zero” extinction process for carbon emissions, which will also be an extinction process for anything that requires substantial energy generation, and for the development of natural resources as the primary wealth engine of Canada? Will the government end the disdain for the role of Canada (and notably some of Canada’s western provinces) as a natural-resources export economy?
The budget will offer a window into the mind of Prime Minister Carney on the matter of natural resources in Canada’s economy and society. With global changes undermining the international carbon control regime and idee fixe, and with an understanding that Canada is on an economic precipice, there’s an opportunity here. Let’s hope Carney works to unshackle one of Canada’s greatest engines of economic progress—its energy and natural resource production, transformation, transportation, consumption and exportation.
Canadians could use the boost in quality of life that Canada’s natural resources could bring to current and future generations.
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