The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) has released its 2024 National Health Expenditure Trends data and it paints an overall picture of rising health spending. As I have noted elsewhere, total health-care spending in Canada is expected to increase by 5.7 percent in 2024, after rising 4.5 percent in 2023 and only 1.7 percent in 2022 coming on the heels of the pandemic. The picture for provincial government health spending is also one of increase but once adjusted for population and inflation, the results are more mixed particularly if one looks at changes since the year before the pandemic. Over the period 2019 to 2024, British Columbia and Prince Edward Island see the largest increases in real per capita provincial government spending at 17 and 16 percent respectively while at the bottom are Manitoba and Nova Scotia, which over the five years have seen their per capita provincial government health spending stay essentially flat. Ontario, over this same period saw an increase of just under seven percent.
Figure 1 plots real per capita Ontario provincial government health spending ($2010) from 1975 to the present and the evidence shows that since 2010, real per capita health spending spending growth was lackluster at best rising from $3,617 to $3,783 - an increase of of 4.6 percent or about half a percent annually. After 2019, the pandemic saw a ramping up provincial government health spending to a peak of $4,316 in 2021 - an increase over two years of almost 14 percent. Since 2021, there has been a decline in real per capita spending and in 2024 it is estimated to sit at $4,040 - for a decline of about 6 percent. Nevertheless, real per capita provincial government health spending in 2024 is still projected to be 6.8 percent higher than 2019.
What is quite interesting is how spending by expenditure category has performed over the 2019 to 2024 period. Figure 2 plots the percentage change in real per capita provincial government health spending by category. Over this five year period, the largest increase has been for real per capita spending on other institutions - namely, long-term care - at nearly 50 percent. This is of course understandable in the wake of what transpired in long-term care homes during the pandemic as well as the promise to build more long-term care beds for an aging population. Next is home and community care at 10.7 percent , followed by public health at 9.3 percent and then hospitals at 8 percent. Other professionals is next with an increase of 5.3 percent followed by capital at 3.2 percent. What comes next however is even more interesting . All other health care net of home and community care spending is down by about a third of one percent. Spending on provincial government drug plans in real per capita terms is down 4.4 percent while physician spending is down 5.8 percent. Finally, real per capita provincial government health spending on health administration is down nearly 24 percent.
The surprise here is that spending has dropped on two items that directly affects a lot of individuals in Ontario - namely, government paid for prescription drugs and physician services. Obviously, if one measures availability of physician services by how much is being spent per person after population growth and inflation, it is obvious that Ontario is having trouble keeping up in this category. With an aging population, the decline in physician and also drug plan spending is definitely going to be felt even if the provincial government asks us to take solace in the increases in long-term care, home care and hospital spending.