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Growth in health-care spending slows: report

By: Larry Kusch

Posted: 10/30/2012 2:16 PM | Comments: 0

Canadian health care spending is expected to rise by 3.1 per cent this year, the lowest growth rate since the mid-1990s.

Total health spending in Canada is anticipated to reach $207 billion in 2012, averaging $5,948 per person. The figures include public and private-sector expenditures. In Manitoba, total health spending is expected to hit $6,518 per capita.

In a report released this afternoon, Canadian Institute for Health Information said modest economic growth and budgetary deficits have had a dampening effect on provincial health care spending over the past few years.

The proportion of Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP) spent on health care will reach 11.6 per cent this year, down from 11.7 per cent in 2011 and an all-time high of 11.9 per cent in 2010, CIHI said.

Hospitals (29.2 per cent), drugs (15.9 per cent) and doctors' services (14.4 per cent) continue to account for the largest shares of the health-dollar pie.

CIHI said population aging has been a modest cost-driver overall, accounting for 0.9 per cent of average annual growth in health care spending over the last decade.

In 2011, the latest year for which data is available, health care accounted for an estimated 38 per cent of provincial and territorial government spending — a figure that has been fairly stable for the past five years.

However, it varied significantly among provinces, from 30.1 per cent in Quebec and 35.8 per cent in Saskatchewan to 44.3 per cent in Manitoba and 47.9 per cent in Nova Scotia.

For more than a decade the public sector has accounted for about 70 per cent of the total health care bill in Canada, with the private sector contributing the other 30 per cent. In Manitoba, public health spending is projected to account for 73.9 per cent of the total dollars spent this year.

Meanwhile, Canada ranks in the top 25 per cent among Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries when it comes to health care spending. But it still shells out far less per person than the United States, the globe’s big spender. Expressed in U.S. dollars, America spent $8,233 per person in 2010, the latest year in which figures are available, while Canada spent $4,445.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca

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