McQuaig Gets It Wrong on Canada's Health Expenditures

In an opinion piece at iPolitics.ca, Linda McQuaig -- the left-wing New Democrat candidate in Toronto Centre during 2013 -- writes the following about Canada's health spending trends under the Conservative Party government of Stephen Harper:

"Instead, Harper has paid lip service to public health care -- while starving it of funds. Waiting until he'd secured his majority, he announced plans in December 2011 that would effectively cut in half the rate of growth of federal health transfers to the provinces, starting in 2017 -- amounting to an estimated cut of $36 billion over ten years. The cuts -- along the lines long advocated by the right -- will dramatically shrink public funding for health care over time, forcing Canadians to pay more of their health care costs privately, on the grounds that the public system is unaffordable. In fact, the record shows the opposite. As UBC health economist Robert Evans put it: 'Opponents of medicare claim that public health care is 'fiscally unsustainable' and that the only viable solution is a shift to more private coverage. Bluntly, this is a lie.'

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Indeed, contrary to popular belief, the amount spent on public health care in Canada has remained stable at about four to five per cent of GDP since the mid-1970s. What is out of control is private spending on health care, notably prescription drugs, which has pushed overall health spending in Canada to about 11 per cent of GDP." I would welcome knowing where McQuaig gets her data to support the claim that "the amount spent on public health care in Canada has remained stable at about four to five per cent of GDP since the mid-1970s. What is out of control is private spending on health care, notably prescription drugs, which has pushed overall health spending in Canada to about 11 per cent of GDP." The World Bank contains datasets for Canada's public and private health expenditures as a percentage of GDP. The data contradict McQuaig's claims. The World Bank dataset begins in 1995 with the public health expenditures already at more than 6.4 percent of GDP, climbing to 6.9 percent of GDP by 2005 -- the year before Harper took office. Since the Conservative Party has been in office, public health expenditures in Canada have risen to 7.7 percent of GDP -- peaking in 2009/2010 at over 8 percent of GDP. In other words, public health expenditures over the past two decades have never been remotely close to the "four to five per cent of GDP" that McQuaig claims has been the constant level of spending since the mid-1970s. In 2005, private health expenditures were 2.93 percent of GDP; they are currently at 3.27 percent. Thus, public health spending under Harper has increased at more than twice the rate that private health spending has. The Canadian Institute for Health Information also publishes annual reports on "National Health Expenditure Trends" for Canada. The latest report shows expenditure trends from 1975 to 2013. Their analysis also shows the distribution of public-to-private health expenditures unchanged under Harper's government. McQuaig needs to clarify the source of her health spending data and any detailed calculations she conducted, as it doesn't look consistent with any of the standard national or international datasets that are publicly available.