FINANCIAL POST COLUMN: We Could Grow Health Care by $21 Billion, No Tax Dollars Required
As Canadian politicians ponder how to increase our economic independence from the United States, they would be wise to review recent research by SecondStreet.org showing how we could create a new $21.6-billion industry, generate upwards of 39,000 new jobs and even reduce health care wait times … all without governments spending a cent.
The only thing we need to do is convince our governments to copy what better-performing universal health care systems in Europe do and give patients a choice: either use the public system or purchase private comprehensive health insurance.
It’s 2025 and Canada’s health care policy is still to the left of the Chinese Communist Party. The results speak for themselves — our health crisis is costing lives and untold suffering.
It’s true that Canadians are allowed to travel to other provinces to pay for treatment. And in Quebec patients can pay locally for treatment. But that’s not the same as allowing patients to purchase comprehensive private health insurance for local services and reduce the risk of having to spend large sums on treatment.
In every other universal health care system in the developed world — from Australia to Sweden — patients can choose to use their public system or pay to purchase private health insurance. Every time a patient opts to go private that can help take pressure off the public system.
SecondStreet.org hired Leger to poll Canadians and found that about half of respondents want to learn more about private insurance options, while nearly a third are already willing to pay current market rates for coverage. Ultimately, we calculated that if governments allowed it, a private insurance market could increase private health spending by a staggering $21.6 billion annually.
Those opposed to private options argue they would weaken health care — that doctors and nurses would leave public hospitals in droves to work in private clinics, leaving fewer professionals to treat the majority of Canadians. But the experience of health systems in other countries suggests that’s not so.
France, Sweden, and Australia all have public systems that function alongside private options and in those public systems patients enjoy shorter wait times than in Canada. In Sweden, for example, 87 per cent of patients still rely on the government-run system. But those who want faster care can pay out-of-pocket or access treatment through privately purchased insurance. This hasn’t weakened the public system: it has taken pressure off it.
There certainly will be cases where staff switch from a government hospital to a private clinic, but what migration has occurred has not been massive. Why? In some cases because of barriers preventing it. For instance, in the United Kingdom, staff working in the public system can supplement their income by working privately only up to 10 per cent of their annual earnings. Canada could impose the same sort of rule.
If there is an overall shortage of health workers in Canada, governments should address it, not by restricting patients’ payment options, but by training more nurses and doctors. Allowing private insurance could help keep health workers in Canada. As one Swedish official told SecondStreet.org, when you have more employers, you have more employees. A more robust non-government health sector could help those in the public sector — particularly surgeons, whose hours are often rationed — by providing opportunities to supplement their income through private work on the side instead of leaving Canada altogether for higher paycheques in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Non-government health facilities can also provide health workers with working conditions they prefer. An overworked doctor in the public system who is thinking about retirement might continue to work for a few more years in a non-government environment that doesn’t force a “move them through quickly” approach to patients.
In other sectors the public can pay for private alternatives to public services and the sky has not fallen. Parents can either send their children to public schools for free or pay to send them to private schools. That choice being available has not caused public education systems to collapse, and an overwhelming majority of new teachers continue to join public schools, despite sometimes higher rates of compensation in private schools.
Millions of Canadians are suffering at the hands of the current health care system and millions more are ready for change. Keeping the public system operating but also allowing patients to purchase private insurance could expand our health sector, create thousands of jobs and reduce the strain on our public system. All at no cost to taxpayers.
Harrison Fleming is legislative and policy director at SecondStreet.org.
This column was originally published in The Financial Post on March 19, 2025.
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