Category Health economics
Health Spending Numbers: An Update on the Long-Term
It is of course useful from time to time to take a look at the longer-term picture when it comes to health spending especially given that there is a slowdown in health expenditure growth. Figure 1 plots per capita total health expenditure in US PPP dollars from 1960 to 2014 for Canada (to 2014) and […]
The challenge: Find an example where ethnicity or culture matters in regulatory policy
Today I was asked by a government policy analyst: "I'm trying to think of an example of a situation when ethnicity or culture matters in regulatory policy. Can you help me out?" Here's my best attempt. I challenge others to try to come up with a better example. The regulation: In Canada, Vitamin D must […]
Is alcohol as harmful as tobacco?
In "Phishing for Phools", George Akerlof and Robert Shiller suggest that: …the harms of alcohol could be comparable to the harms of cigarettes, affecting not just 3 or 4 percent of the population, as a chronic life-downer, but, rather, affecting 15 to 30 percent; the higher number especially if we also include the alcoholics' most […]
Reforming Government: Do We Need a Human Investment Super-Ministry?
From time to time, I like to ruminate on what could be done to better develop or improve the delivery of government services especially given the tendency of government ministries to overlap when providing services. This gets a further push when I am teaching public finance – as I am this term. There is of […]
The Great Moderation: International Trends in Alcohol Consumption
December marks the start of the Christmas and holiday season in much of the world and celebration is often marked by the consumption of alcoholic beverages. The negative health effects of consuming too many alcoholic drinks are well documented and along with stricter laws on drinking and driving, the end result has been a decline […]
Health Spending: A Much Longer Term View
The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) has just released their 2015 report on health expenditure trends and they show that total nominal health expenditure in Canada continues to grow (1.6 percent in 2015) but at a slower rate. Health spending (public and private) has reached $219.1 billion dollars or $6,105 dollars per capita. As […]
Federations and Health Care Spending
In putting together my material for my fiscal federalism course next term, I decided to take a look at some health spending figures for the OECD countries in order to compare federal with non-federal countries. Federal structures generally try to combine the economic advantages of a more centralized state with some of the welfare and […]
Comparing Health Spending Restraint: Past and Present
Adjusting for inflation and population growth, the new CIHI numbers show per capita provincial and territorial government health expenditures have declined since their peak in 2010. From a high of $2,584 (1997 dollars), real provincial and territorial government health spending per capita has declined by 3.9 percent to reach an estimated $2,483.
New CIHI Health Numbers: Health Care Cost Curve Still Bending
The Canadian Institute for Health Information has released its 2014 edition of health spending data – National Health Expenditure Trends, 1975 to 2014 – and the numbers seem to show a continuing trend towards slower growth of health expenditures in Canada.
Physicians and Workload: A Very Simple International Comparison
The Canadian Medical Association has been having its annual meetings this week in Ottawa and in honor of the event, let me put out another international comparison on physicians using data from the OECD Health Statistics 2013. The first chart (Figure 1) is a basic resource availability measure showing the number of physicians per 1000 […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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