healing wins
The pandemic has shown that an investment that is too curative and too little preventive exposes its shortcomings in a health crisis. Especially among vulnerable populations.
Nonetheless, governments aligned with both the “right” (read, more liberal, against total state interventionism) and “left” (more for social policy) are more likely to invest in health to support cure than prevention.
“More money will go to hospitals and frontline care, but little to public health prevention programs. Above all, we will preserve what is visible,” confirms Olivier Jacques.
Federal to provincial transfers
OECD countries spend an average of 2.3% of their healthcare budget on public health, while the Canadian government spends nearly 7% on it.
A comparison of Canadian provinces in another unpublished study by this researcher (The political economy of public health spending: Evidence from the Canadian provinces), shows the same trend in investments made between 1975 and 2018: Regardless of government, the healing takes precedence, and by a wide margin.
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