Roughly 30 percent of all Canadian healthcare is privately paid for, about the same proportion as the average for the 34 industrialized countries that are members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). However, two things make Canada’s public-private mix unique....

As Canada’s society ages, more personal care and health support will be needed for people who, either as a consequence of disability or aging, require assistance to function independently. As this happens, policymakers face the daunting challenge of balancing the fiscal burden on taxpayers...

The adoption of new health technologies brings potential improvements to quality of life as well as new costs for provincial healthcare systems. An appropriate evidence-based framework for adoption decisions therefore can go a long way to improving value for money in our health systems. While...

Modern health systems, like Canada’s, face similar pressures. Populations are aging, government revenues are dwindling, and the scope for new services is increasing as new technologies develop. However, each country is responding to these pressures in unique ways. Arguably, Canadians pay too...

Physician compensation accounts for about one-fifth of all Canadian healthcare spending. But physicians’ decisions, particularly those made by primary care doctors, are the conduit for the majority of the system’s costs. The incentives physicians have to promote efficiency, therefore, affect...

In this paper we discuss the efficiency properties of insurance markets where supplementary private insurance is allowed to exist together with a compulsory government insurance plan. Our main conclusion, which is contrary to both those of Besley (1989) and Selden (1993), is that in a simple...

This paper considers whether private educational institutions can play an expanded role in helping attain society's objective with respect to the efficiency and equity of the system of post-secondary education. The authors focus on how public subsidies can be used to meet the social objectives...