Canada among top spenders on health care

Released: Friday, February 6, 2026

How and what countries spend money on provides insight into their priorities. A healthy population supports productivity and economic output. So, it’s not surprising that health care spending is one of the largest expenditures among the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OCED) 38 members. One of the key metrics in comparing health care performance is health care spending as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product. In 2023, total health care spending in Canada represented 11.18% of its GDP , placing it sixth overall among OECD countries in overall health care spending as a percentage of GDP and puts it in a group of higher health care spending countries alongside France, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, whose health care spending represented 11.5%, 11.3%, and 11.0% of GDP, respectively.

Data for this week’s chart comes from the Organisation on Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)’s data explorer on health statistics.

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