Managing Healthcare for an Aging Population : How Alberta Can Confront Its Coming Fiscal Challenge

“Between 1999-2000 and 2010-11, total government program spending increased by 36.4%, from $7,505 per capita to $10,240 on a constant dollar basis…. Nowhere is the need to bring expenditures and revenue into alignment more obvious and critical than in health care… with the population aging – and more expensive medical technology and treatments available to improve health outcomes and quality of life – we have every reason to believe spending on health care will continue to rise in the foreseeable future.” Shaping Alberta’s Future: Report of the Premier’s Council for Economic Strategy (Alberta 2011, p. 96-97). Albertans carry a $615 billion fiscal burden – the higher tax bill for increased healthcare costs over the next half-century – and should prepare now for the coming demographic squeeze, says a report released today from the C.D. Howe Institute. In “Managing Healthcare for an Aging Population: How Alberta Can Confront its Coming Fiscal Challenge,” authors Colin Busby and William B.P. Robson recommend that Alberta prefund selected healthcare services, and find cost savings and efficiencies by benchmarking against other provinces that get better bang for their bucks in some areas