Health System Overview
Health System Rankings
Health System Outcomes
Health System Coverage
Health System Costs for Consumers
Health System Expenditures
Population, Midyear 2022: 38,454,327
Population Density (Number of Persons per Square Kilometer): 4.23
Life Expectancy at Birth, 2022: 82.85
Infant Mortality Rate, 2022 (per 1,000 live births): 3.94
Under-Five Mortality Rate, 2022 (per 1,000 live births): 4.58
Projected Population, Midyear 2030: 41,008,596
Percentage of Total Population Aged 65 and Older, Midyear 2022: 19.03%
Projected Percentage of Total Population Aged 65 and Older, Midyear 2030: 22.84%
Projected Percentage of Total Population Aged 65 and Older, Midyear 2050: 25.46%
Source: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2023). Data Portal, custom data acquired via website. United Nations: New York. Accessed 12 May 2023.
Population Insurance Coverage For A Core Set Of Healthcare Services* (%) (2019):
Public Coverage: 100%; Primary Private Health Coverage: 0%; Total: 100%
*”Population coverage for health care is defined here as the share of the population eligible for a core set of health care services – whether through public programmes or primary private health insurance. The set of services is countryspecific but usually includes consultations with doctors, tests and examinations, and hospital care. Public coverage includes both national health systems and social health insurance. On national health systems, most of the financing comes from general taxation, whereas in social health insurance systems, financing typically comes from a combination of payroll contributions and taxation. In both, financing is linked to ability to pay. Primary private health insurance refers to insurance coverage for a core set of services, and can be voluntary or mandatory by law (for some or all of the population). Additional private health insurance is always voluntary. Voluntary private insurance premiums are generally not income‑related, although the purchase of private coverage may be subsidised by the government.”
Source: OECD (2021), Health at a Glance 2021: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/ae3016b9-en.
Annual household out-of-pocket payment, current USD per capita (2019): $753
Source: Global Health Expenditure Database. Health expenditure series. Geneva: World Health Organization. Last accessed June 9, 2022.
Out-of-Pocket Spending as Share of Final Household Consumption (%) (2019): 2.9%
Source: OECD (2021), Health at a Glance 2021: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/ae3016b9-en.
Remuneration of Doctors, Ratio to Average Wage (2019)
General Practitioners: 2.9
Specialists: 4.7
Source: OECD (2021), Health at a Glance 2021: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/ae3016b9-en.
Remuneration of Hospital Nurses, Ratio to Average Wage (2019): 1.1
Remuneration of Hospital Nurses, USD PPP (2017): $57,700
Source: OECD (2021), Health at a Glance 2021: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/ae3016b9-en.
“Canada has a predominantly publicly financed health system with approximately 70% of health expenditures financed through the general tax revenues of the federal, provincial and territorial (FPT) governments. The provinces and territories (PTs) have primary responsibility for financing, regulating and administering universal health coverage (medicare) for their residents. They also provide partial coverage for other health goods and services (non-medicare services), including prescription medicines coverage and long-term care, for some segments of the population. The term medicare refers to these publicly funded universal health coverage (UHC) systems that fall under the federal standards and oversight through the Canada Health Act. Provincial governments delegated significant responsibilities for administration and delivery of publicly funded health services to arm’s-length agencies within defined geographical areas but, in recent years, there has been a trend towards greater administrative centralization by single provincial agencies. In addition to setting and administering national standards, the federal government is responsible for health coverage for specific subpopulations including military and prison inmates, and for funding non-medicare services for some Indigenous populations. It also has a strategic role in terms of setting national standards for medicare, funding and facilitating data gathering and research, and regulating prescription medicines and medical devices.”
Source: Marchildon G.P., Allin S., Merkur S. Canada: Health system review. Health Systems in Transition, 2020; 22(3): i–194.
“PT [Provincial and Territorial] ministries of health are the principal third-party payers in Canada. All these governments administer their own single-payer medicare coverage systems under their own legislation and regulations. As the principal payers, provincial ministries and health authorities work through, and contract with, a range of independent health care organizations including hospitals, day surgeries, diagnostic clinics, medical laboratories, emergency transportation companies, LTC organizations and primary health clinics.”
Source: Marchildon G.P., Allin S., Merkur S. Canada: Health system review. Health Systems in Transition, 2020; 22(3): i–194.
“Canada is ranked seventh in the share of GDP spent on health among OECD countries and Canada’s recent experience in terms of the growth of health spending as a share of the economy is similar to other OECD countries. Almost all revenues for publicly funded health spending come from the general tax revenues of FPT [Federal, Provincial, and Territorial] governments, a considerable portion of which is used to provide universal medicare. The remaining amount is used to subsidize other types of health care (non-UHC [Universal Health Coverage]/medicare) including long term care and prescription medicines. Over 20% of PT [Provincial and Territorial] health financing is from the Canada Health Transfer, a cash transfer from the federal governments to the PTs. Since 2014, the Canada Health Transfer is provided on a purely per capita basis and does not account for differences in population needs or costs of delivering health care.
“Canada’s share of private health expenditures has been stable over the past 20 years but is high when compared with some other OECD countries due to the narrowness of UHC that excludes major health goods and services such as prescription medications. The role of private finance has seen a slight shift away from out-of-pocket (OOP) spending toward private health insurance, in part because of the importance of employment-based private insurance for non-medicare goods and services including prescription medicines, dental care and vision care.”
Source: Marchildon G.P., Allin S., Merkur S. Canada: Health system review. Health Systems in Transition, 2020; 22(3): i–194.
“The Canadian health system, governed by the Canada Health Act of 1984, provides universal population coverage. The benefit package includes inpatient and most outpatient care but excludes some important categories including outpatient prescription drugs, dental, or vision care. This results in substantial OOP [Out-Of-Pocket] due to direct payments, mostly for pharmaceuticals. It is difficult to generalize much beyond this because each of the 13 provinces and territories chooses the extent to which it covers such services. For example, each has its own pharmacy benefits program and formulary and the prevalence of complementary VHI [Voluntary Health Insurance] coverage also varies. Complementary insurance covers many of the potential OOP costs and some provinces require employers to provide it for employees. Furthermore, beginning in 2010 most provinces adopted catastrophic income-based pharmacy insurance that protects individuals for catastrophic costs in purchasing medications. In almost all cases the OOP costs for the very poor are covered through a variety of federal and provincial programs. Since the number of changes has been limited, OOP has grown moderately in the period 2004–2014. Some provincial innovations stand out. Ontario is implementing publicly funded universal comprehensive drug coverage, called “pharmacare,” for children and youth.”
Source: Rice, Thomas et al. “Revisiting out-of-pocket requirements: trends in spending, financial access barriers, and policy in ten high-income countries.” BMC health services research vol. 18,1 371. 18 May. 2018, doi:10.1186/s12913-018-3185-8.
“Canada is a federation, so the design of the Canadian health care system derives from the allocation of responsibilities in Canada’s constitutional documents between the federal government and the provincial governments. The British North America Act of 1867 and the 1982 Constitution assign responsibility for health care to provincial governments and provide the federal government with extensive revenue-raising power. Consequently, Canada’s health care system comprises 13 distinct provincial/territorial2 health care systems. Each provincial system, however, conforms to national standards embodied in the 1984 Canada Health Act, which the federal government enforces through a system of conditional federal transfers (the Canada Health Transfer) to the provinces (Box 4.1).”
Source: Jeremia Hurley and G. Emmanuel Guindon. “Private health insurance in Canada.” In Private health insurance : history, politics and performance. Thomson, S., Sagan, A., & Mossialos, E., Eds. (2020). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
World Health Systems Facts is a project of the Real Reporting Foundation. We provide reliable statistics and other data from authoritative sources regarding health systems in the US and sixteen other nations.
Page last updated May 25, 2023 by Doug McVay, Editor.
