Reducing wait times for health care

As David Henderson explains in chapter 4 of this volume, the “first dollar” coverage feature of the government-funded system results in the demand for health care services exceeding the supply of those services, and some instrument must be substituted in place of price to ration access to health care. [...] Likewise, differ- ences in wait times across countries are more likely to reflect differences in the ability of national health care systems to serve the demand for health care in a timely manner than to reflect differences across countries in the preferences of health care suppliers and patients to delay diagnoses and treatment for medical or personal reasons. [...] While most studies of the costs of wait times focus on the linkage between an individual’s health status and the economic value of that individual’s time spent in the workplace, Henderson underscores the point that the value of the individual’s leisure time will also be adversely affected by health problems or concerns about one’s health status. [...] Hence, estimates of the economic cost of wait times that focus exclusively on the consequences of health problems in the workplace will seriously understate the overall eco- nomic costs of waiting for medical care, since they ignore the reduced mon- etary value of compromised leisure time. [...] While acknowledging that health problems have consequences that extend beyond the boundaries of the workplace, Globerman, in his chapter, focuses in detail on the labour market consequences of wait times and the broader impacts of wait times for Canada’s economic growth.