Community Sustainability Equity
July 7, 2009
It is true that health care costs are rising 13% to almost $11 billion this year. It is also true that the Alberta Health Services Board is forecasting a $1.1 billion deficit. What does this mean though? Well let’s step back, take a broad view and gain some perspective on health care costs.
Sustainability is not determined by the number of people who live in Alberta, nor from changes in spending year to year. Sustainability is determined on whether you can afford something over the long term or not. Since sustainability is dependent on affordability, it makes sense to use GDP, the amount of goods and services one produces.
The facts:
· As a percentage of GDP, health care spending in Alberta is 7.2%, whereas for Canada as a whole it is 9.8% and in the United States it is 15.3%.
· In 2007, Canadian GDP per capita was $39,736. Alberta’s GDP ($54,939) was 38% higher than the Canadian average. Last year health care spending in Alberta ($5,730 per capita) was only 11% higher than the Canadian average ($5,170 per capita).
· Since the mid 1990s, on a GDP per capita basis, health care spending in Alberta has been virtually unchanged.
Source: The Parkland Institute report ‘Crisis What Crisis: Public health care affordability in Alberta’ (June 2009) by Greg Flanagan.
What is all the hullabaloo about then? It looks like it is much ado about nothing.
Instead of running around like Chicken Little we should be focusing on how to make our health care more efficient, more public, and more innovative. On the other side of the equation we need to replace the flat tax. This was introduced as a package of tax cuts in the year 2000. The result has been a loss in revenue of $2 billion a year. The provincial progressive tax should be reinstated so that our public services are adequately funded.
Let’s get on with it.
