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Misinformation and Wishful Thinking about Medicare's Sustainability

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In July 2007, the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) published articles by Irfan Dhalla (2007) and François Béland (2007) denying that the growth of government health expenditures observed in Canada is unsustainable. Methodological and conceptual errors in their articles produced invalid analyses and grossly misleading conclusions about the sustainability of government health spending under the Medicare policy model. Yet the errors were elementary mistakes that should have been easily flagged by peer reviewers at the journal before publication. Even worse, the errors were avoidable because peer-reviewed research previously published by The Fraser Institute has already explained why the methods and concepts used by Dhalla and Béland are inappropriate. Appropriate metrics show that government health spending continues to grow faster than the ability to pay for it.


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