Provincial healthcare systems are experiencing significant challenges in providing timely access to publicly funded healthcare. The population is aging, increasingly comorbid (Naik et al. 2024), immigration is high (Government of Canada 2024) and public investment in additional healthcare services has not kept pace (CIHI 2024). Meanwhile, challenges to publicly funded healthcare delivery continue to mount; private and for-profit providers are making significant inroads in some provinces and eroding equity of access (Quesnel-Vallée et al. 2020). Canadians are increasingly skeptical that public administration of healthcare is affordable, accessible, effective or efficient.
Pervan et al. (Wed,) studied this question.