Canada Tops Health-Care Spending Yet Lags in Doctor Availability: Report

Canada spends the second-highest share of its economy on health care among 32 countries with universal or systems, yet ranks near the bottom for the availability of doctors, hospital beds, and much of its medical technology, according to a recent study.

The study, conducted by the Fraser Institute, examines how Canada compares with other high-income countries in health-care spending, resource availability, and access to medical services.

After adjusting for differences in the age of each country’s population, Canada ranked second-highest in health-care spending as a percentage of GDP in 2024, the most recent year for which comparable data were available. Canada spent 11.9 percent of GDP on health care, behind Chile at 12.6 percent.

Despite the high spending, the study found that Canada generally has fewer medical resources per capita than many comparable countries.

The report is a 2026 update to a long-standing series that began in 2002. Its main data sources include OECD databases, the Canadian Institute for Health Information, and the Commonwealth Fund, a U.S.-based private foundation focused on health-care policy.

The 32 countries included in the study are OECD members, have universal or near-universal coverage for core medical services, and are classified as high-income countries by the World Bank.

For human and hospital resources, Canada ranked 30th out of 32 countries for the availability of physicians and 26th out of 31 for hospital beds dedicated to physical care. It ranked 29th for psychiatric-care beds and 14th for nurses per 1,000 people. The study describes nurse availability in Canada as “middling.”

Canada also ranked poorly on several measures of medical technology and diagnostic imaging. It placed 28th out of 31 countries for MRI units and CT scanners per million people, 23rd out of 29 for PET scanners, third out of 27 for gamma cameras, and 13th out of 25 for mammographs. Gamma cameras and mammographs were exceptions to Canada’s generally low rankings. The comparisons covered fewer than 32 countries where comparable inventory data were unavailable.

The study also found that Canada ranked at or near the bottom on three of four indicators of timely access to care.

Among nine countries with comparable data, Canada ranked last for the percentage of patients who could get a same-day or next-day appointment when sick, at 22 percent. It ranked eighth-worst for the percentage of patients who waited more than a month to see a specialist, at 65 percent. Canada also had the highest percentage of patients reporting waits of two months or more for non-emergency surgery, at 58 percent.

Canada performed better on after-hours access, ranking fifth among the nine countries for the percentage of patients who said it was easy to find care outside regular hours.

Across 13 indicators, the study found that Canada’s availability of medical resources and timely access to services were generally below the OECD average.

“There’s a clear imbalance between the high cost of Canada’s health-care system and the actual care Canadians receive, policymakers should learn from other countries that provide more efficient and timely universal healthcare,” said Nadeem Esmail, one of the study’s co-authors, said in a statement.

In an interview with The Epoch Times, Esmail said countries that incorporate private providers into some health-care services have achieved better results.

“They have private providers competing to deliver universally accessible hospital services,” Esmail said, adding that countries like Sweden, which provides universal health-care coverage, has been “moving towards a larger role for the private sector.”

Sweden ranked 10th among the 32 countries, with health-care spending equivalent to 10.9 percent of GDP.