Provincial government per capita expenditures on hospitals continue to decline. This is the third year of absolute decline according to Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) data. Of course hospital services are also affected by inflation, like other services. One way to measure this is the total health care price index. CIHI reports the health care implicit price index over this three year period has increased by approximately 8.3% (160.9/148.6). That is equal to about 2.7% per year. This inflation means the 2012/13 per capita hospital funding would have to increase to $1,534.95 in 2015/16 just to keep up with increasing health care prices. Instead the government expended just $1395.73. In other words, in three short years, the government has reduced real spending on hospital services by 9.1% per person ($1395.73/ $1534.95). If we considered the impact of an aging population on hospital costs (usually put at about 1% per year in extra costs), the
Notes from Leftwords -- Doug Allan