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Health care in Canada is not free: report

Last Updated Jul 31, 2018 at 10:22 am MDT

The estimated average cost of public health care insurance for a typical family of four in Canada this year is $12,935.

A new report from the Fraser Institute suggests a single Canadian will pay an average $4,640.

Direct medical service costs are extremely low in Canada, but the report, The Price of Public Health Care Insurance 2018, finds Canadians actually pay a substantial amount for public health care through taxes.

“Most Canadians know that they do pay something for health care, however, they don’t really know how much,” Bacchus Barua, Association Director, Health Policy Studies with the Fraser Institute explained.

“This is because we never really see a bill for medical services and there is not dedicated health insurance tax.”

Another finding, from data compiled from Statistics Canada and the Canadian Institute of Health Information, is that the cost for an average family of four has risen 68.5 per cent in the 21 years between 1997 and 2018.

“We’re always concerned about the equation of costs versus benefits,” Barua said.

“We do know that we have incredibly long wait times for treatment. There are concerns about not enough family doctors, we have concerns about a shortage of beds, but we tend to sometimes brush these failures away because we tend to think that we pay either very little for the system or the system is entirely free, and that just isn’t true.”

In the report are more specific details about income classes, too.

It suggests the 10 per cent of Canadian families with the lowest incomes will pay an average of about $496 for public health insurance in 2018, while the top 10 per cent of income earners will pay $38,903.