VANCOUVER—Among 28 industrialized countries in the world with universal health-care, Canada is only one of six that does not use any form of cost-sharing for core medical services, which can be used to incentivize more efficient use of scarce health resources and potentially reduce wait times, finds a new study published by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank.
Despite ranking amongst the most expensive universal health care systems in the developed world, comprehensive measures of performance indicate that Canada routinely lags behind its international peers in key metrics of health care performance, such as the availability of doctors and hospital beds, and wait times for medically necessary care.
