Cory

Cory

2p

1 comments posted · 0 followers · following 0

13 years ago @ Macleans.ca - The health care time bomb · 0 replies · +1 points

Growing costs of the healthcare system in Canada as a result of our aging population is a common myth that has been debunked by the Candian Health Services Research Foundation http://www.chsrf.ca/mythbusters/html/myth5_e.php Evidence shows that the impact of aging on costs will only amount to a one percent annual increase, which is entirely sustainable. Impact of aging on the healthcare system is not aging per se, but, rather, how older people use health care. Elderly people are utilizing health services more intensely compared to their counterparts twenty-five years ago. The Canadian Institute for Health Information provides much evidence for this argument as well.

The unsustainability of our healthcare system is also a mythhttp://www.chsrf.ca/mythbusters/html/myth28_e.php While it is true that costs have increased substantially in some key areas such as drug costs, the national healthcare spending as a proportion of our GDP has remained constant within the 8 – 10% range since 1983. Another idea that user fees actually help health care funding and reduce waste has also been discredited http://www.chsrf.ca/mythbusters/html/myth4_e.php

Provincial health care budgets have gone up over the years, as you pointed out, but given that the national spending has been more or less stable in relation to the national GDP, the real issue is who contributes to healthcare and by how much.