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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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User fees for health care
— why a bad idea keeps coming back (or, what's health got to do with it?) | | Author(s) | Robert G Evans, Morris L Barer, Greg L Stoddart |
| Journal title | Canadian Journal on Aging, vol 14, no 2, Summer 1995 |
| Pages | pp 360-390 |
| Keywords | Health services ; Usage [services] ; Charges ; Canada. |
| Annotation | Calls for user fees in Canadian health care go back as far as the debate leading to the establishment of Canada's national hospital insurance programme in the late 1980s. Although there has been a shift in the rationale, some of the more consistent claims have been that user fees are necessary to control runaway health care costs, and to deter unnecessary use (read abuse) of the system. The introduction of user fees in the financing of hospital or medical care in Canada would be to the benefit of a number of groups. The authors demonstrate that those who are healthy and wealthy would join health care providers (and possibly insurers) as net beneficiaries of a reintroduction of user fees for hospital and medical care in Canada. Conversely, the poor and ill will bear the brunt of the redistribution (which is what user fees are all about), and older people feature prominently in these groups. Claims of other positive effects of user fees, such as reducing total health care costs, or improving appropriateness or accessibility, do not stand up in the face of the available evidence. Whether one is for or against user fees reduces to whether one is for or against the resulting income redistribution. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-970821260 A |
| Classmark | L: QLD: QEJ: 7S |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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