Alternative Health
The first organized health care in Canada was hospitals set up by Catholic religious orders in New France. Religiously run hospitals were the norm up to the early twentieth century. They were generally for the poor; wealthier citizens would be cared for in their homes by expensive doctors. In the late nineteenth century a movement began that called for the improved health care for the poor, focusing mainly on sanitation and hygiene. This period saw important advances including the provision of safe drinking water to most of the population, public baths and beaches, and municipal garbage services to remove waste from the city.
The early twentieth century saw the first widespread construction of government run hospitals, mainly asylums for the mentally ill and sanitariums for those suffering from tuberculosis. Calls for increased government involvement also became common, and the idea of a national health insurance system had considerable popularity. William Lyon Mackenzie King promised to introduce such a scheme, but while he created the Department of Health he failed to introduce a national program. During the Great Depression calls for a public health system were widespread. Doctors who had long feared such an idea reconsidered hoping a government system could provide some stability as the depression had badly affected the medical community. However, governments had little money to enact the idea. In 1935, the United Farmers of Alberta passed a bill creating a provincial insurance program, but they lost office later that year and the Social Credit Party scrapped the plan due to the financial situation in the province. The next year a health insurance bill passed in British Columbia, but its implementation was halted over objections from doctors.
It was not until 1946 that the first Canadian province introduced near universal health coverage. Saskatchewan had long suffered a shortage of doctors, leading to the creation of municipal doctor programs in the early twentieth century in which a town would subsidize a doctor to practice there. Soon after groups of communities joined to open union hospitals under a similar model. There had thus been a long history of government involvement in Saskatchewan health care, and a significant section of it was already controlled and paid for by the government. In 1946, Tommy Douglas' Co-operative Commonwealth Federation government in Saskatchewan passed the Saskatchewan Hospitalization Act, which guaranteed free hospital care for much of the population. Douglas had hoped to provide universal health care, but the province did not have the money.
In 1949, BC created a program similar to Saskatchewan's. Alberta however created Medical Services (Alberta) Incorporated (MS(A)I) in 1948 to provide prepaid health services. This scheme eventually provided medical coverage to over 90% of the population.
In 1957, the federal government passed the Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act to fund 50% of the cost of such programs for any provincial government that adopted them. The HIDS Act outlined five conditions, public administration, comprehensiveness, universality, portability, and accessibility. These remain the pillars of the Canada Health Act.
By 1961, all ten provinces had agreed to start HIDS Act provinces. In Saskatchewan, the act meant that half of their current program would now be paid for by the federal government. Premier Woodrow Lloyd decided to use this freed money to extend the health coverage to also include physicians. Over the sharp disagreement of the Saskatchewan College of Physicians and Surgeons, Lloyd introduced the law in 1962.
The Saskatchewan program proved a success and the federal government of Lester B. Pearson, pressured by the New Democratic Party (NDP) who held the balance of power, introduced the Medical Care Act in 1966 that extended the HIDS Act cost-sharing to allow each province to establish a universal health care plan. It also set up the [[Medicare (Canada)|Medicare]] system. In 1984, the Canada Health Act was passed, which prohibited user fees and extra billing by doctors.