Report: Healthcare for Average Canadian Family to Cost $12K This Year

The cost of healthcare for the average Canadian family has increased by almost 70 percent in the last 20 years, according to a study from the conservative Fraser Institute.

According to data from Statistics Canada and the Canadian Institute for Health Information, a typical family of four in Canada will pay $12,057 on healthcare this year. The average single Canadian will spend $4,596, almost twice the cost in 1997.

"One of the most remarkable things about Canada's healthcare system is that nobody actually seems to know how much they pay for it," Bacchus Barua, senior economist at the Fraser Institute and the study's co-author, told The Toronto Sun.

"Quite often in conversation, sometimes people refer to it as a free healthcare system," he continued. "I think there are some people who might think that there's just a few tax dollars here and there. In provinces that still have premiums, a lot of people tend to think that the premiums are the full cost of the healthcare system. But in fact none of that is actually the true cost of healthcare. We pay a lot for our healthcare system but through a variety of taxes through the general tax system."

He added, "In general Canada is usually among the top spenders…. Depending on the measure that you look at, we can be ranked between three to nine."

Barua also noted that wait times in Canada are "some of the longest… in the developed world," with an average of 20 weeks between a referral and treatment last year.

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