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The result of our high levels of private health expenditure is billions of wasted dollars annually.

One of the most glaring examples is our lack of a national prescription drug plan. Health policy experts estimate that a national pharmacare program would actually reduce the total cost of prescription drugs in Canada by $7.3 billion each year. University of B.C. Prof. Steve Morgan estimates that, under our largely privatized pharmaceutical arrangements, Canada will waste approximately $100 billion over the next decade compared to if we launched a national pharmacare program.

Another major source of waste in Canadian health care is the bloated administrative costs of the private sector. Academic studies have found that administrative costs in the United States’ highly privatized health care system are about double those of the Canadian system. This is partly why the U.S. spends much more on health care as a share of its total economic pie (GDP) than we do in Canada.

Furthermore, for-profit extended health insurance in Canada is among the most inefficient in the world. Health policy researcher Michael Law found that Canadians pay $6.8 billion more in private health insurance premiums than they receive in payouts from claims in a given year. That means for every dollar paid, Canadians only receive 74 cents in benefits.

We also know that the lack of public coverage for mental health services — unlike in countries such as the United Kingdom — is enormously costly to people’s lives and to our economy. The cost of mental illness in Canada is estimated to be at least $50 billion annually. Yet, recent research shows that a national program to make psychotherapy more widely available would cost approximately a few hundred million dollars.