Healthcare System Attitudes

Healthcare System:History Attitudes Toward the System

Introduction to Healthcare System Attitudes

Physicians have displayed an ambivalent attitude toward public health insurance in Canada. On the one hand, government involvement in health care guaranteed universal coverage and did away with the problem of collecting payments from patients and insurers. On the other hand, government involvement necessarily meant some regulation of the profession, including the fees that doctors charge for their services. Some provincial medical associations resisted the introduction of public medical insurance because of this regulation. In Saskatchewan in 1962 and Québec in 1970, physicians went on strike to protest the introduction of government-funded medical insurance.

A consensus eventually emerged. Doctors agreed to respect the fees negotiated with provincial governments in return for the freedom to practice medicine on a fee-for-service basis. This consensus was threatened when some physicians began to charge higher fees than those covered by provincial insurance by extra-billing. The federal ban on extra-billing in the Canada Health Act in 1984 led most provinces to prohibit the practice. In Ontario, where extra-billing was most widespread, the ban prevailed only after a bitter strike by doctors in 1986.

Public opinion polls commissioned by the National Forum on Health in 1994 found that Canadians were profoundly attached to equity and universality in health care. Other polls in the late 1990s showed negative reactions to expenditure cuts and efficiency measures in hospitals. The public saw these cuts as compromising the quality of and access to health care. This perception, along with examples of overcrowding at certain emergency rooms, led to a public backlash against the cuts. In many provinces, as well as at the federal level, politicians became sensitive to public discontent and injected more funds into the health-care sector.

Whether demand for expensive health services can be controlled by deterrents such as waiting lists, or whether such controls will lead to greater desire for private medicine remains to be resolved. Canada is one of the very few public health-care systems that does not allow some measure of partial payment by patients, such as co-payments, deductibles, or user fees, for services primarily paid for by insurance. Canada is also one of a dwindling number of countries that has not experimented with two-tier medical delivery, in which private health insurance is allowed to cover the same services as public insurance.

The Canadian health-care system is at an important and potentially controversial crossroads. On the cautionary side, there seems to be a growing unease about whether the system can be sustained. Can a system that essentially shuts out the private market for health services survive in an era in which demand for health care is increasing at a remarkable pace? On a more positive note, the Canadian health-care system is regarded as among the most effective of any industrialized country. Despite its flaws, the Canadian system continues to combine the best features of any successful health-care system and offers high-quality, comprehensive care for all citizens at reasonable cost.” (1)

Resources

Notes and References

Information about Healthcare System Attitudes in the Encarta Online Encyclopedia

Guide to Healthcare System Attitudes

Law is our Passion

This entry about Healthcare System Attitudes has been published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (CC BY 3.0) licence, which permits unrestricted use and reproduction, provided the author or authors of the Healthcare System Attitudes entry and the Encyclopedia of Law are in each case credited as the source of the Healthcare System Attitudes entry. Please note this CC BY licence applies to some textual content of Healthcare System Attitudes, and that some images and other textual or non-textual elements may be covered by special copyright arrangements. For guidance on citing Healthcare System Attitudes (giving attribution as required by the CC BY licence), please see below our recommendation of "Cite this Entry".

• APA
• MLA
• MLA 7
• CHICAGO
• OSCOLA

Usage Metrics

111 Views

Google Scholar: Search for Healthcare System Attitudes Related Content

 

Schema Summary

This entry was last updated: August 24, 2014