Managing Healthcare for an Aging Population: How Alberta Can Confront its Coming Fiscal Challenge

Between 1999-2000 and 2010-11, total government program spending increased by 36.4%, from $7,505 per capita to $10,240 on a constant dollar basis. Nowhere is the need to bring expenditures and revenue into alignment more obvious and critical than in health care... with the population aging – and more expensive medical technology and treatments available to improve health outcomes and quality of life – we have every reason to believe spending on health care will continue to rise in the foreseeable future.” Shaping Alberta’s Future: Report of the Premier’s Council for Economic Strategy (Alberta 2011, p. 96-97).