Drugs cost more than the doctors who dish them out in Canada.
According to figures released Tuesday by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) in its annual report on health care, health care spending in Canada is expected to reach $148-billion in 2006, an increase of $8-billion over last year but lower than the average increases of the last six years.
Medication is expected to be the second largest expense in Canadian health this year — second only to the cost of running hospitals.
Physicians take the third-largest share of expenses, accounting for 13.1 per cent of total health expenditure. Hospitals take up 29.8 per cent of spending and drugs, both prescribed and non-prescribed, account for 17 per cent.
Spending, infants and seniors account for highest spending per capita, and together accounted for 47 per cent of the total provincial and territorial health spending.
On average, Canada is expected to have spent $4,548 per person this year, but there are discrepancies on who receives more of the funding, according to data from 2004, the latest available age-breakdown of health spending.
Health care spending by provincial and territorial governments was highest for infants and seniors, costing an estimated $7,565 per person for Canadians under the age of one, and $8,969 for those aged 65 and over. Seniors accounted for 44 per cent of the total provincial and territorial health care spending that year — a ratio that has been stable since data was first broken down by age in 1998 — while infants account for 3 per cent.
Provincially, Alberta is expected to spend the most per capita in Canada, tipped to rack up a bill of $4,924 for each resident in 2006.
Manitoba comes in second with a per capita health budget of $4,901, followed by Ontario at $4,760.
Quebec had the lowest per person expenditure, at $3,976 per resident. The spending gap between the provinces with the highest and lowest per-capita spending is projected to be 24 per cent in 2006.
Nationally, health spending is outpacing both inflation and population growth for the tenth year in a row, said the chairman of CIHI's board of directors, Graham W. S. Scott.
That could be due to more public money flowing into health care delivery under federal/provincial agreements, he said, but the rate of increase was slowing down. Health care spending as share of Canada's gross domestic product remains at its highest level in 31 years, he said.
National Health Expenditure Trends, 1975-2006 projects that total health care spending in Canada will increase by 5.8 per cent in 2006 over the previous year — slightly lower than last year's estimated annual growth rate of 6.4 per cent, and lower than the average yearly increase from 2000 to 2004 (7.8 per cent).
The 70:30 ratio between public and private spending remained steady, and hospitals continue to make up the largest component of health spending (29.8 per cent of total expenditures).
In the public-sector, hospitals account for about 38.5 per cent of all health costs, followed by doctors (18.4 per cent). In private-sector spending, drugs make up 35.3 per cent of the bill and dental services are 21.5 per cent.
Canada remained in the top five for health spending in the OECD in 2004, which is the most recent data available.
The United States had the highest per capita health spending at $6,970, followed by Luxembourg ($5,823), Switzerland ($4,657) and Norway ($4,530).
The countries in the 21-nation OECD that spent the least were Turkey ($662) and Mexico ($756).
