Background- Canada’s public health insurance system fully covers medically necessary hospital and physician services, but does not cover community-based non-physician mental health provider services or prescription drugs. Almost 2/3 of Canadians have private supplemental insurance for extended...

Health funding reforms often fail to change organizations’ and individuals’ behaviour in the way that policy makers intend. This is perhaps because financial incentive systems traditionally have been designed according to a “reward-punishment,” or behaviourist, model of influencing human...

We develop a model to analyze alternative health care financing arrangements. Health care is demanded by individuals varying in income and severity of illness. There is a limited supply of health care resources used to treat individuals, causing some individuals to go untreated. We examine...

1.0 Background Since 1994, the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-term Care (MOHLTC) has used an equity funding formula to allocate new funding for the delivery of long-term care (LTC) community services, which includes home care services and community support services in the province.[Ontario...

This paper presents the findings from simulations of the introduction of publicly funded Medical Savings Accounts in the province of Ontario, Canada. The analysis exploits a unique data set linking population-based health survey information with individual-level information on all physician...

Surveys of Canadian physicians show that, on average, general/family physicians have been reducing hours of direct patient care in recent years. We currently have little understanding of how changing hours of work relate to service provision. This project examines this relationship using...

We study the extent and drivers of income-related inequity in utilization of dental services in Canada using the concentration-index approach that has been widely applied to study equity in physician and hospital services. Because dental care is almost wholly privately financed in Canada, our...

Canada’s Workers’ Compensation Boards (WCBs) finance health care for injured and ill workers in parallel to provincial health insurance plans. Parallel systems of health care finance can create preferred access for some. WCBs have in recent years pursued a number of strategies to expedite or...

This study examines the impact that private financing of prescription drugs in Canada has on equity in the utilization of publicly financed physician services. The complementary nature of prescription drugs and physician service use alongside the reliance on private finance for drugs may induce...

In 1986, Louise Russell published her landmark book, “Is Prevention Better Than Cure?”, in which she evaluated the health and economic benefits of preventive health care interventions and tested the validity of the common assumption that prevention saves money. While debunking the myth that...