Highlights

• Out of the 25 OECD countries analyzed, the ones with greater for-profit privatization in health care have worse outcomes for seven mortality indicators.
• The relationship between greater for-profit privatization and higher mortality rates is even clearer for the private delivery of health care services than for the private financing of health care services.
• The countries that combine high private financing and high private delivery of health care services have the worst life expectancy and mortality outcomes. Meanwhile, the countries with low private financing and low private delivery of health care services have the best outcomes. Countries with a mixed model place somewhere between those two ends of the spectrum.
• For-profit privatization as a variable seems to play a more significant role in life expectancy and mortality rates than health spending or income inequality.
• Canada, which is in the mixed country group, has rather mediocre life expectancy and mortality outcomes.
• The governments of several provinces, including Quebec, have expressed a desire to further privatize the financing and delivery of health care services, but that may have negative, rather than positive, impacts on population health.