The Foundations of National Public Hospital Insurance

BY ALECK OSTRY
CBMH/BCHM / Volume 26:2 2009

This paper first describes the development of two-tiered hospitals in many Canadian cities to the 1920s. The second section illustrates the chronic fiscal problems these two-tiered institutions faced and demonstrates the failure of this model of hospital financing under the economic stress of the Depression.

The third and fourth sections of the paper shift to a discussion of Saskatchewan focusing on the roots of the rural hospital system and the implementation of a province-wide public hospital insurance plan. The fifth section outlines the continuing fiscal stresses facing hospitals in provinces without public or with partly public hospital insurance plans in the 1950s as they faced postwar pressures with inadequate financing mechanisms derived from the Victorian era.  The final section outlines the main reasons why all the provinces signed onto a national public hospital insurance plan.

The purpose of this paper is to provide the background to provincial and federal government acceptance of a national public hospital insurance plan in Canada.

Read this paper HERE.