Health Care Financing
The Issue:
“There are stark and unpalatable choices that we face with respect to health care, but there is no magic solution. We absolutely must have an adult debate about how we deal with this.” That’s what David Dodge, former governor of the Bank of Canada and former deputy finance minister, told the Liberal policy conference last March. But an “adult debate” on the sustainability of public health care must start from who and what drives health-care spending, and for a clear identification of the winners and losers from eroding or dismantling Medicare.
– Robert G. Evans, PhD, Harvard Economics
Resources:
Watch the June 17, 2010 Parliamentary Briefing and Press Conference featuring Robert Evans and Nik Nanos
Fact Sheet: Sustainability of Health Care: Myths and Facts | Version Française
Op-Ed: Medicare as sustainable as we want it to be Toronto Star, June 2010
Mythbuster: Canada’s system of healthcare financing is unsustainable, Canadian Health Services Research Foundation, December 2007
Reports and Papers:
Neat, Plausible, and Wrong: The Myth of Health Care Unsustainability, Canadian Doctors for Medicare, 2011
The Sustainability of Medicare, Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, 2010
How Sustainable is Medicare? A Closer Look at Cost Drivers in Canada’s Health Care System, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2007
Economic Myths and Political Realities: The Inequality Agenda and the Sustainability of Medicare, Centre for Health Services and Policy Research, 2007
Media:
Health budget math doesn’t add up, Toronto Star, January 20, 2012
Health Accord in the News, January 2012
Health Financing in the News, December 2011
Tax isn’t a four letter word, Globe and Mail, October 2011
Reality check on health-care costs Toronto Star, April 4, 2010
Liberals urged to overhaul Medicare due to rising costs Canadian Press, March 27, 2010
Health care is good for the economy National Post, May 14, 2009
Our health care serves up profits The Hill Times, December 1, 2005
For-profit health care would drive up costs by $7.2 billion a year: study Canadian Press, June 7, 2004
