Economic freedom promotes growth while foreign aid fails developing countries

The Fraser Institute's Hospital Report Card: Ontario 2006 is constructed to help patients choose the best hospital for their inpatient care by providing them with information on the performance of Ontario acute-care hospitals.

This Fraser Alert looks at three dimensions of Canada's physician shortage. It begins with a short review of the literature examining whether or not a greater supply of physicians provides benefits other than easier access to care. The next section considers how Canada's physician supply has evolved over time and what factors have helped determine that evolution. The final section closes with a consideration of what is ultimately driving the physician shortage in Canada and provides a sensible solution to the problem.

This is a chapter from the book What States Can Do to Reform Health Care: A Free-Market Primer. Seven leading scholars contributed chapters to this book, which focuses on Medicaid, health insurance, hospital certificate-of-need laws, malpractice liability, physician quality assurance, prescription piracy, and pharmaceutical costs.