Canada - World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe

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Health systems in transition Canada 63
provincial governments had increased spending on health care. By 2000, the
federal government had begun to increase cash transfers to the provinces that
culminated with a commitment in 2004 to apply an automatic rate of annual
increase of 6% for the following 10 years (CICS, 2004).
Although both public and private spending per capita has increased since
1995, private-sector health expenditures have grown more rapidly than
government spending. This is partially a result of technological developments
that have allowed fully covered inpatient services to be shifted to outpatient
settings with less complete public coverage. Canada’s share of private health
expenditures, in part the product of almost no public coverage for dental care
and vision care, is high by other OECD country standards (CIHI 2011a).
As can be seen in Figs 3.1 and 3.2, Canada’s recent experience in terms of the
growth of health spending as a share of the economy is similar to other OECD
countries. The one exception is the United States, which spends appreciably
more as a proportion of its economy.
Fig. 3.1
Trends in total health expenditure as a share of GDP in Canada and selected countries,
1990–2010
1990
Share of GDP (%)
1992
1994
1996
1998
2000
2002
Source: OECD (2011).
Note: 2010 data was available only for Canada, not for other countries.
United Kingdom
2004
2006
Australia
2008
2010
United States
France
Canada
Sweden