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Ontario spends the least per capita on health care of all of the provinces. It’s a fact, and a talking point, that has been used widely since Premier Doug Ford’s comments last week about sending patients to a vet clinic for MRIs and CT scans.
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The outrage was palpable over Ford’s joke and critics used it as proof that we simply need to spend more to fix our system.
All of us have horror stories of long waits in emergency rooms, to see a doctor or get a specialist appointment. The system desperately needs to improve, and the Ford government says that they are making moves in that direction, some of which I discussed in a recent column.
That said, the same source that shows Ontario spends the least per capita of all provinces also shows that Ontario has the best outcomes on key metrics.
According to the Canadian Institute of Health for Health Information, the average spent per resident when considering both public and private funding is $8,740. The highest province in the country is Newfoundland and Labrador at $10,333 while Ontario is dead last at $8,245.
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What’s interesting is that on six treatments measured nationally, Ontario is the leader across Canada in providing timely access to hip replacement and knee replacement surgeries. When it comes to providing timely access to radiation therapy, Ontario meets the mark 99% of the time just behind Manitoba at 100% but well ahead of Newfoundland, the big spender among the provinces which only meets the mark 57% of the time.
On hip fracture repair, Ontario is just ahead of the national average meeting the guidelines 83% of the time. For cataract surgery, the province is behind the national average meeting the timeliness guidelines just 65% of the time which is still well ahead of Newfoundland which meets the guideline just 43% of the time.
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None of this is to say that Ontario’s health system is perfect, it’s not, but it does show that simply pouring more money into the system each year doesn’t guarantee you better outcomes.
On that note, Ontario has been increasing spending on health care over the past several years. In fiscal year 2017-18, the last year of the Liberal government, the province spent $55.6 million on health and long-term care while in fiscal year 2022-23, they spent $74.2 billion.
That’s a 33% increase in spending.
Even after taking inflation and population growth into account, that’s a real increase in spending.
Could the province spend more on health care?
Perhaps in some areas it would be beneficial but this current fiscal year, the province has budgeted $85 billion for health alone while long-term care, now its own department, is close to $8 billion.
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To claim that health funding in Ontario is being cut as the opposition parties claim and too many in the media repeat without checking the facts is disingenuous. While some areas could likely use more funding, the above statistics on outcomes show that more money doesn’t necessarily mean better outcomes — it just means a more expensive system.
As a patient of the system, I’d prefer better outcomes to blindly spending more money.
The people advocating for simply spending more on a system that doesn’t always work are the same ones opposing the innovations the Ford government is implementing. Marit Stiles of the NDP, Bonnie Crombie of the Liberals and Mike Schriener of the Greens are three opposition leaders united in saying no to innovation.
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No to letting pharmacists treat common ailments as happens in other provinces. They say no to allowing private or community clinics to provide MRIs, CT scans or surgery for cataract, hip or knee replacement.
They warn it will mean paying with your credit card instead of your OHIP card when they know that is not the case.
All three of them are against innovation that will improve patient access to care.
When they, or anyone else says we need to spend more, point them at the results from Newfoundland and ask them if that is what they want.
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