Total Health Spending, USD PPP Per Capita (2019): $5,418

(Note: “Health spending measures the final consumption of health care goods and services (i.e. current health expenditure) including personal health care (curative care, rehabilitative care, long-term care, ancillary services and medical goods) and collective services (prevention and public health services as well as health administration), but excluding spending on investments. Health care is financed through a mix of financing arrangements including government spending and compulsory health insurance (“Government/compulsory”) as well as voluntary health insurance and private funds such as households’ out-of-pocket payments, NGOs and private corporations (“Voluntary”). This indicator is presented as a total and by type of financing (“Government/compulsory”, “Voluntary”, “Out-of-pocket”) and is measured as a share of GDP, as a share of total health spending and in USD per capita (using economy-wide PPPs).”

Source: OECD (2021), Health spending (indicator). doi: 10.1787/8643de7e-en (Accessed on 20 January 2021).

Current Health Expenditure Per Capita (USD) (2018): $4,995

Source: Global Health Observatory. Current health expenditure (CHE) per capita in US$. Geneva: World Health Organization. Last accessed Oct. 11, 2021.

Current Health Expenditure As Percentage Of Gross Domestic Product (2018): 10.79%

Source: Global Health Observatory. Current health expenditure (CHE) as percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) (%). Geneva: World Health Organization. Last accessed Oct. 11, 2021.

Out-Of-Pocket Expenditure As Percentage Of Current Health Expenditure (2018): 14.73%

Source: Global Health Observatory. Out-of-pocket expenditure as percentage of current health expenditure (CHE) (%). Geneva: World Health Organization. Last accessed Oct. 11, 2021.

Out-Of-Pocket Expenditure Per Capita (USD) (2018): $735.7

Source: Global Health Observatory. Out-of-pocket expenditure (OOP) per capita in US$. Geneva: World Health Organization. Last accessed Oct. 11, 2021.

Annual household out-of-pocket payment, current USD per capita (2018): $736

Source: Global Health Expenditure Database. Health expenditure series. Geneva: World Health Organization. Last accessed Jan. 14, 2021.

Out-of-Pocket Spending as Share of Final Household Consumption (%) (2017): 2.8%

Source: OECD (2019), Health at a Glance 2019: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/4dd50c09-en.

Remuneration of Doctors, Ratio to Average Wage (2017)
General Practitioners: 3.1
Specialists: 4.9

Source: OECD (2019), Health at a Glance 2019: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/4dd50c09-en.

Remuneration of Hospital Nurses, Ratio to Average Wage (2017): 1.1
Remuneration of Hospital Nurses, USD PPP (2017): $57,000

Source: OECD (2019), Health at a Glance 2019: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/4dd50c09-en.

Current Health Expenditure Per Capita (USD) (2016): $4,458
Current Health Expenditure as Percentage of Gross Domestic Product (%) (2016): 10.5%
Domestic General Government Health Expenditure as Percentage of General Government Expenditure (%) (2016): 19.0%
Population with household expenditures on health greater than 10% of total household expenditure or income (2009-2015) (%): 2.6%
Population with household expenditures on health greater than 25% of total household expenditure or income (2009-2015) (%): 0.5%

Source: World health statistics 2019: monitoring health for the SDGs, sustainable development goals. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2019. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.

“ƒ The public sector in Canada is responsible for about 70% of total health expenditures, which is relatively low compared with other high-income countries.

“ƒ In the past decade, 2008–2018, health expenditures grew at about the same rate as the national economy, as provincial governments reigned in spending following the financial crisis. Prior to 2009 there was a prolonged period of rapid spending growth since the previous economic downturn in the mid-1990s.

“ƒ Almost all revenues for public health spending come from the general tax revenues of federal, provincial and territorial governments, a considerable portion of which is used to provide universal medicare – medically necessary hospital, diagnostic, medical care, designated surgical-dental services and inpatient drug therapies that are free from charges related to their provision. The remaining amount is used to subsidize other types of health care (nonmedicare) including LTC and prescription drugs. Over 20% of PT health financing is from the Canada Health Transfer, a cash transfer from the federal government.

“ƒ Out-of-pocket (OOP) payments and private health insurance are responsible for most private health expenditures, in roughly equal parts. The vast majority of private health insurance comes in the form of employment-based insurance for non-medicare goods and services including prescription drugs, dental care, vision care and preferred accommodation (e.g. private rooms) in hospitals. Private health insurance does not compete with the provincial and territorial “single-payer” systems for medicare.

“ƒ Global budgets and fee-for-service are dominant methods of paying hospitals and physicians, respectively, with some limited adoption of activity-based payments in hospitals and capitation funding for GPs.”

Source: Marchildon G.P., Allin S., Merkur S. Canada: Health system review. Health Systems in Transition, 2020; 22(3): i–194.

“As can be seen in Figure 3.1, Canada is ranked seventh in the share of GDP spent on health among OECD countries. Canada’s recent experience in terms of the growth of health spending as a share of the economy is similar to other OECD countries (Fig. 3.2). The one exception is the USA, which spends appreciably more as a proportion of its economy. Figure 3.3 compares per capita spending in purchasing power parity across OECD countries, and Canada ranks 11th in 2018.

“Public and private spending per capita has increased at similar rates since 2010. The average annual growth rate in per capita private health spending for the 9-year period 2010 to 2019 was 2.8% compared with 2.7% for public spending (CIHI, 2019a). Canada’s share of private health expenditures has been stable over the past 20 years but is high relative to other OECD countries, in part the product of low public coverage for prescription drugs and almost no public coverage for dental care and vision care (Fig. 3.4). Public spending on health in Canada made up 19% of total government expenditures in 2015, which is comparable to the Netherlands (19) and the UK (18.5), higher than in Australia (16.7), and lower than in the USA (22.6) (Fig. 3.5).”

Source: Marchildon G.P., Allin S., Merkur S. Canada: Health system review. Health Systems in Transition, 2020; 22(3): i–194.

“By international standards, Canada spends an above-average amount on health care. Per person spending on health in 2016 was Can$5900, which placed it 12th among OECD countries behind the United States, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Norway, among others (OECD, 2017).³ Health care spending in Canada represented 10.6% of gross domestic product in 2016 (OECD, 2017). After slowing in the mid-1990s during a period of unprecedented fiscal restraint in the public sector, real (inflation-adjusted) total health care spending rose at an annual rate of 4.6% between 1996 and 2008 (Canadian Institute for Health Information, 2010) but has decreased by an average of 0.6% per year between 2010 and 2015 (Canadian Institute for Health Information 2015).”

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.

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 several other nations.

Page last updated Oct. 11, 2021 by Doug McVay, Editor.