Healthcare is an important perspective for any given nation. The government needs to frame policies and provide necessary funding to provide quality healthcare services to the people of that nation. There could be both public and private sectors associated with a given healthcare industry in that nation. However, we would like to focus upon the spending of an individual toward the healthcare. Today, man has turned more conscious. Hence, we can find, each of the developed countries spending nearly 8-17% of their Gross National Product on health care (Kocher, Emanuel, & DeParle, 2010). We can assume that, it is a large number, and, it might also increase in the near future. The thesis of this paper shall discuss the amount spent by an individual on his healthcare in Canada. We shall determine the relationship between the amount spent on healthcare and well-being. It might not be possible for every single individual in the entire nation to spend the same amount on healthcare. However, one thing sure is that, there seems to be a relationship between the quality of the healthcare and the amount of money spent on it. It will further define the relationship between the health of the nation and the proportion of the GDP spent on the healthcare.
Canada has 14th largest Purchasing Power Parity in the entire world. It is a member of several organizations and is also considered to be one of the wealthiest nations. The entire economy is dominated by the service industry. As per the OECD data statistics of 2011, the GDP of Canada was around $CDN 1,719,950 million. The major industries that contributed to the GDP were real estate, manufacturing, mining, healthcare, public administration, finance and insurance, wholesale and retail trade, and educational services. Thus, healthcare is considered to be one of the booming industries in Canada.
In Canada, the healthcare services are delivered through publicly funded healthcare system. In this nation, the Medicare systems are cost-effective since the administrative work is at minimal. An individual does not need for any claiming. It is important to note that, the number of doctors in Canada in 2012 was 75,400. The average salary of these professionals was around $330,000. One of the research reports concluded that, nearly 81% of the Canadians preferred to the healthcare system of Canada over United States.
Now, talking about the healthcare spending in Canada, it has increased a lot between 1975 and 2009. The total healthcare spending in 1975 was $39.7 billion, which increased to $137.3 billion in 2009. The per capita spending has increased from $1,720 to $4,100. It might cross the mark of $500 billion by 2015, with each person spending around $6,000 - $7,000 on their personal healthcare. The net GDP spending seemed to be around 11-12% in 2014. It was 11.7% in 2011, followed by 11.6% in 2012. The majority of the amount was spent in hospitals. Here, $51 billion were spending after patients and for other medical purposes. It was followed by the pharmaceuticals with $30 billion and physicians $25 billion. The biggest healthcare costs were for the hospitalizations, the fees of the physicians, and the price of the drugs, which formed the biggest cost components for the patients in Canada.
However, the people of the rural regions and belonging to the lower classes were still facing difficulties in affording to such high healthcare costs. There were patients from these backgrounds, who were not able to access the quality healthcare services of the private hospitals (Mizrahi & Gorin, 2008). So, one thing is sure that, we should not afford too much for all the existing healthcare services. We need to find alternatives solutions that will help the people of the entire society to access to quality healthcare services. Looking at the growth rates in spending as well as in the GDP, we can find a relationship between the proportion of GDP spent on health and the health of the nation. However, the government has formulated policies for healthcare and has even constituted acts regarding healthcare. There have been issues from two perspectives. First covers the technical issues such as waiting times, unavailability of desired medical services at a given time, and lack of proper medical staff. And, the second one focuses upon the accessibility of the healthcare services to the poor sections of the society (Oberlander, 2010). Hence, the government of Canada needs to implement better solutions and services so that they can provide quality healthcare services, and that too in proper time to all the sections of the society.
References
Kocher, R., Emanuel, E.J., and DeParle, N.M. (2010). The affordable care act and the future of clinical medicine: The opportunities and challenges. Annals of Internal Medicine, 153(8), 536-53.
Oberlander, J. (2010). Beyond repeal – The future of health care reform. New England Journal of Medicine, 363, 2277-2279.
Mizrahi, T., and Gorin, S. H. (2008). Health care reform. New York: Oxford University Press.
