September 15, 2004

Billions are not Trillions

Mustafa Hirji (email) at 10:10 AM

As discussed earlier, Alberta spends $9.1 billion on health care each year. Since Alberta is about 10% of Canada's populations, nation-wide health care spending is probably on the order of $80-90 billion this year.

Currently health care costs rise by about 7% each year. Being generous to Mr. Martin and using the $80 billion dollar figure, over the next five years, the provinces will spend on the order of $1.2 trillion on health care. Paul Martin feels that a contribution of $12.2 over this period will be enough to drastically increase quality. That's about a 1% increase.

Mr. Martin, you're at least an order of magnitude away from even making a relevant contribution.

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