OTTAWA — Canada falls behind other nations with universal healthcare in providing basic medical services despite outspending most of our peers, suggests a new report.
The new Fraser Institute study, entitled Comparing Performance of Universal Health-Care Countries , demonstrates that despite ranking among the highest spenders compared to 31 other nations, Canadians face a dire shortage of doctors, hospital beds and diagnostic scanner availability — all while waiting longer for treatment.
“In 2023, Canada ranked third highest for health-care expenditure as a percentage of GDP,” wrote study author Mackenzie Moir, a senior policy analyst with the think-tank.
When compared to 30 other nations with healthcare spending ranked a percentage of GDP, only Switzerland and New Zealand spend more than Canada in 2023.
The UK and Austria rounded out the top five.
But when it comes to returns on that investment, Canada ranked 27th out of 30 on physician availability, 13th for nurses, 25th for open hospital beds, and 27th for psychiatric care beds.
“Except for middling availability of nurses, Canada clearly has fewer human and capital medical resources per capita than other high-income OECD countries with universal health care,” Moir wrote.
Only South Korea, Finland and Japan ranked lower than Canada for physician availability, per 1,000 citizens.
Greece, Austria and Norway came first, second and third respectively.
Canada ranked ahead of the UK, Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden for hospital bed availability, while only Denmark, the UK, Israel and Hungary had lower availability of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Computed Tomography (CT) scanner units.
CANADA RANKED POORLY IN ACCESS TO RESOURCES
Access to healthcare resources was another metric where Canada ranked poorly.
Compared with nine similar nations, Canada ranked last for the ability to make same-day or next-day doctor’s appointments, eighth for patients waiting for more than a month for a specialist appointment, and last for patients who waited more than tow months for elective surgery.
“Despite Canada ranking among the most expensive universal health-care systems in the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) on an age-adjusted basis. the availability of resources — including access to resources — is generally below that of the average OECD country,” Moir wrote in his study.
“Clearly, there is an imbalance between what Canadians receive in return for the relatively high amount of money they spend on their health-care system.”
