We often hear that, in Canada, health is a provincial responsibility. This is understood as the provinces having autonomy over, and responsibility for, a large portion of the funding and delivery of health care services. But the influence of provincial policies on health outcomes goes far beyond doctors and hospitals, physiotherapists and pharmacies.
When a health care system cannot make the best use of resources at its disposal, consequences can be dire, and such is the case with the Canadian health system. A recent study from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) found that between 12,600 and 24,500 deaths could be prevented each year in Canada if our health system were perfectly efficient
The most basic way of categorizing healthcare financing is to separate public and private healthcare costs. Public financing includes expenditures from any level of government (financed through taxation) as well as social insurance funds (these are much more widespread in European health care systems, although Workers’ Compensation Boards would be included here).
