This article discusses how the North American Free Trade Agreement will affect Canadian healthcare and social programs. Explains NAFTA. Explores how to reform health care in Canada.
Provides updated expenditure data by source of funds (sector) and use of funds (category) at the provincial/territorial level and for Canada. It also contains an overview with discussion on the trends of health care spending in Canada.
Provides information on the performance of Canada's health care system, including short-term mortality rates following admission with a new heart attack and short-term mortality rates following admission with a new stroke.
Summarizes recent developments in health and health care. Includes an overview of health spending and updated information on how Canadians view the health system and the services that they have received.
Offers a chapter-by-chapter gendered analysis of the Final Report of the Royal Commission on the Future of Health Care, Building on Values: The Future of Health Care in Canada (Romanow 2002).
Assesses some of the economic costs of violence against women in terms of criminal justice costs for policing, court and corrections services, in health costs for doctors, emergency wards, mental health clinics, substance abuse treatments, and in social service costs for welfare, housing, child care, sexual and woman assault centres, not to mention women's loss of work time.
Raises six key issues in the debate about the best method of funding services and the implications of allowing more private funding into our health care system.
Examines how the health care system is financed, provides an analysis of innovations that are already underway in province/territories and looks at the current and future cost drivers and accelerators in Canada's health system. The analysis shows how provinces/territories are already significantly involved in activities that are improving the quality of health care services provided to Canadians. It also illustrates the source and size of health care drivers, as well as the significant additional costs associated with health system renewal activities. According to the findings, health care needs are growing as a result of population change, new technologies (e.g. major joint surgery, genetic testing), increased incidence of chronic disease (e.g. heart disease, diabetes) and new drugs. These factors have the potential to increase future provincial health costs at a rate above inflation. This report calls on the federal governement to immediately and fully restore funding cut from the Canada Health and Social Transfer (CHST), and implement an appropriate escalator to ensure that funding for health and other social programs through the CHST keeps pace with economic trends, social factors, and changing health technology, which impact on the sustainability of the system.
