Author Description

This paper contributes to a public dialogue • Inflation (as reflected in salary increases on health care sustainability by providing a better and higher cost of supplies) has been the understanding of cost pressures in public health biggest cost driver over the past decade, care and what they mean for the future in terms with increases averaging 2.5% per year, of sustainability. [...] This paper considers the evi- are already spiraling out of control, and when dence by reviewing the relative impacts of popu- those in the baby boom generation start to hit lation aging and other cost drivers, and project- their senior years en masse the costs of provid- ing health care expenditures forward based on ing health care will surely lead to the collapse of the latest demographic estimat [...] There is a nearly continual expansion of health In the late 1970s and 1980s, the expansion care services in Canada over the past three dec- of public coverage of health care was in nursing how sustainable is medic are? [...] We return to the ogy in health care is the main determinant of issue of how we address these challenges in the how sustainable is medic are? [...] The federal treated - as well as the increasing cost of the government could restore compulsory licens- drugs themselves due to new drugs under pat- ing to enable greater generic drug production ent entering the market.21 Increases in the price for the Canadian market, enhance funding for of prescription drugs and changes toward more new drug development that would be put in the expensive drugs ar.