Rising food and shelter costs have been in the spotlight as drivers of the affordability crisis. But consumer price index (CPI) data shows that what Canadians pay to stay healthy has soared almost as much since overall inflation hit a peak in June 2022.
The jump in health-care costs may go under the radar for many Canadians, experts say — in part because many costs are covered by the public health-care system (which also means they aren’t included in CPI data) and in part because typical out-of-pocket health expenses may be sporadic.
“You pay your rent every month and you pay your grocery bill every week,” Jimmy Jean, vice-president and chief economist at Desjardins Group in Montreal, said in an interview with CBC News. “So it’s very much in consumers’ faces in a way that you couldn’t say for a dental appointment that you have twice a year.”
But health-care prices have nonetheless followed a “sharper curve” in recent years, said Andrew Longhurst, a senior researcher at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) — one that may get steeper still.
“I think that growth is only going to increase as we see greater aging and we see provincial governments — especially among the larger provinces — really pulling back and choosing fiscal restraint and austerity,” Longhurst said.
The overall measure of inflation — called all-items CPI — has risen a bit over 11 per cent since June 2022. The broad category called health and personal care has gone up much more — just over 15 per cent in that time, behind shelter costs (more than 16 per cent) and food prices (up almost 19 per cent).
But the subset of health-care services, which include things like eye exams, physiotherapy appointments and basic dental care, is up 18.5 per cent — nearly as much as food.
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Dental care services and eye care goods have both seen prices rise 20 per cent since June 2022, and both are emblematic of a public-private split within the health-care industry, Longhurst said, with costs controlled on only one side.
“Prescription eyeglasses and contact lenses — most of that industry is all private for-profit, increasingly investor-driven, private equity is involved. And it’s similar with dental care,” he said. “These are areas where there is virtually no public provision, very limited not-for-profit provision, and there are no public constraints on what those costs are.”
Statistics Canada data shows that the prices of health-care services have generally tracked well above overall inflation since well before the COVID-19 pandemic. In the previous 20 years, year-over-year inflation in health-care services has exceeded overall inflation 85 per cent of the time.
During that period, health-care services inflation was significantly lower than overall inflation only during the pandemic-era inflation spike — reflecting a period when other prices spiked, rather than a slowdown in health-care costs.
Part of the long-term trend is due to the economic realities of health and dental services, where a big expense is skilled labour costs, said the Desjardins Group’s Jean.
“It’s a function … of sectors where it’s very difficult to extract efficiency gains or productivity gains that would reduce costs a bit more,” he said.
“Those sectors tend to respond a lot to wage costs — and again, you’ve seen labour shortages and we’ve also had more population. So demand has been there for those services at a time where in some categories of health-care services, it’s been harder to find qualified, trained, skilled workers.”
Another issue, as Longhurst of the CCPA pointed out, is that nothing is stopping those costs from going up, unlike for services covered by provincial health insurance, such as visits to a doctor.
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“Public health-care rates are subject to agreements between governments and providers,” he explained. “So in the case of physicians, those fee amounts are negotiated, and so there’s some control in terms of containing those costs.”
In 2024, after the 2022 inflation peak, Canada rolled out the Canadian Dental Care Plan, but dental care CPI numbers have continued to climb. The dental plan may have added to demand, Jean said, in a sector constrained by skilled labour needs.
The plan is also administered by a private insurer, Longhurst said, so “the onus was placed upon the patient to ensure that they were going to a dental office where the public portion would cover what they needed.” Many people pay an additional out-of-pocket amount, he said.
The program also continues to create challenges for patients and dentists.
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Still, many Canadians may only be dimly aware of health-care price inflation. The public system covers a substantial portion of people’s costs, making the out-of-pocket remainder less consequential than some other expenses. In 2025, food and shelter made up almost 50 per cent of the total CPI basket, while health and personal care was about a 10th of that.
As Jean noted, many health-care expenses are significantly less top of mind because they aren’t featured in monthly or weekly budgets. And while dental and eye care are essential and don’t amount to discretionary purchases, patients have some short-term flexibility.
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“What we’re seeing with the affordability squeeze is in things like life insurance — those are the things that people will try to save on or delay because they’re less urgent,” Jean said.
“It could be the same thing for a dental appointment or eye care: Facing a squeeze, people will tend to focus on paying their mortgages and putting gas in their cars.”
Private spending on health care may not be in the range of spending on food and shelter, but Canadians are increasingly shouldering more of the load with private spending. A recent CCPA analysis of data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information found that from 2021 to 2023, private health-care spending per person grew by 8.1 per cent — almost twice as fast as public spending.
“We see that spending growth is increasing fairly rapidly as the population ages and also as provinces pull back on investment in those areas,” Longhurst said. “So people need those services — they’re not going to go without them. And that’s why we see health-care inflation continuing to run quite hot, because unlike a traditional good where maybe people can postpone the purchase of a car, they need those services and they’re going to continue to pay for them.”
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The risk is that the burden of additional costs will affect people less financially equipped to handle them, Longhurst warned, saying there are already “significant gaps in who has access to care based on their income and their ability to purchase out-of-pocket the services they need.”
Those variations are likely to grow, he said, “if provincial governments and the federal government don’t step in to fill those gaps. That is certainly pronounced going forward as we see access challenges across the country, whether it’s emergency departments or family doctors.”
