Why increasing Canada’s health budget for preventive and social care makes sense fiscally and medically

Why increasing Canada’s health budget for preventive and social care makes sense fiscally and medically

Published: July 15, 2024 4.01pm EDT

Canadian’s interests lie in the wise investment of tax dollars. In health care funding, that means increasing investment in public health programs. To maximize value, these programs should be led by specialized community connectors who link patients with local services and resources.

This budget expansion is one that even fiscal conservatives, who generally favour reduced government spending, can support, because in the long term it can save money and improve health outcomes for all Canadians.

By increasing investment in public health today, we can decrease “curative care” investment (hospitals, physicians and drugs) in the future, and simultaneously improve the health of the population.

This is because public health initiatives like preventive and social care programs are proven to be the most effective long-term financial investments, as they address the social determinants of health.

Yet, the current health-care budget provides relatively minimal funding to public health. This is consistent with historical trends. On average, since 2000, federal and provincial/territorial governments have allocated a mere 7.5 per cent of the publicly funded health-care budget to public health initiatives and 63.7 per cent to curative care.

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