Building better health care

Ontario is among the jurisdictions with the highest total per capita health care spending in the OECD, but countries that spend less on health care achieve comparable or better health outcomes, perform better on quality measures of access to care, wait times, and technical efficiency, and achieve a higher level of equity in health care delivery and financing. [...] The Institute gratefully acknowledges the ongoing funding support from the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development, Trade and Employment and the input received from the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care on this publication. [...] Certainly, in terms of health care financing, one of the Yet Ontario has a costly health care system with total per easiest ways to contain costs in the public health care capita spending 33 percent above the OECD average and, system would be to shift them to the private sector, giving compared to international peers that spend less, Ontario the private sector the ability to charge users directly. [...] In the most advanced economies of the OECD, including France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, The Institute challenges the notion that universal health care and the United Kingdom, the split between public and private means “free” health care, and that price signals cannot work financing of health care is 80/20; in Canada and Ontario, in a public health care model. [...] ONTARIO, COMPARED WITH THE REST OF CANADA, HAS BEEN THE most progressive province in making health care system improvements, and its 2012 Action Plan for Health Care outlines important policy initiatives to ensure “Right Care, at the Right Time, and at the Right Place.” Yet Ontario still has to find the “Right Cost” to health care and to achieve greater efficiency and equity in both health care fi