Understanding the
pressures and challenges facing Ontario’s health care system and in particular
- provincial government health spending – requires an overview of the
numbers. The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) via its National Health Expenditure
Database provides a wealth of information on health spending in Canada. The 2019
edition of the National Health Expenditure release allows us to piece
together a broad picture of where health spending in Ontario has been over the
last few decades.
Figure 1 on total
health spending in Ontario provides a view of total and provincial government
health spending over the period 1975 to 2019 (with 2018 and 2019 being
estimates). They show steadily rising
spending. Total health spending on
health in Ontario was $4.4 billion in 1975 and has grown to an estimated $100.5
billion. Meanwhile, over the same period
provincial government health spending has grown from $3.1 billion to $63.4
billion. The massive growth in health
spending over time is part of the conventional wisdom that health spending is
unsustainable.
However, these numbers
are nominal totals and do not take into consideration population, inflation or
economic growth which are all necessary to provide context for these
numbers. Between 1975 and 2019, provincial
government health spending in Ontario grew 20-fold while GDP grew 13-fold,
population grew 1.7-fold and prices 5-fold.
