Health care in an aging Canada: constraint or choice?

It is often presumed that population aging will result in increased demand for health care, with older Canadians seen as a "burden" to the working population. Yet, such a presumption of direct correlation (with implied causality) belies the complex questions of societal choices in expenditures: factors such as per capita health care utilization, nondemographic forces that drive the health care system, and the health care system's treatment of older people. Closer examination of trends in health care and in population aging reveal that just as large feet are correlated with, but do not cause, higher intelligence, population aging may be correlated with,but not cause, increasing health care costs.