Rodrigo Sekkel

"Canada’s publicly provided health care system actually requires rationing in order to contain costs. Because services are offered at no monetary price, demand exceeds the available supply of doctors, equipment, and facilities. If the different provinces (which operate most health care services) wanted to meet the full demand, each would have to raise taxes significantly to fund services. To keep expenditures down (managing the imbalance from public provision) and thus taxes as well, the system relies on rationing through wait times rather than prices (…) To illustrate the magnitude of rationing (and the trend), one can examine the evolution of the median number of weeks between referral by a general practitioner and receipt of treatment from 1993 to 2024. In most provinces (except one), the median wait time in 1993 was less than 12 weeks. Today, all provinces are close or exceed 30 weeks. In two provinces, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, the median wait times exceed 69 weeks. For some procedures, such as neurosurgery, the wait time (for all provinces) exceeds 46 weeks.  "