The story published the next day in The Globe and Mail was underwhelming – a couple hundred words in the news briefs on Page 4: “The Canada Health Act became law yesterday,” it read, “setting forth a federal prescription for the ills of medicare and leaving the provinces with bitter medicine to swallow.”
Today, as was the case four decades ago, the impetus for this debate has been the rapid growth of private care, which is seen, at different ends of the political spectrum, as either a threat to Canada’s largely publicly funded health system, or a possible pressure-release valve. We are still wrestling with that question of universality today – does ensuring that every Canadian has access to essential health care services regardless of their ability to pay mean that everything must be “free” ? Does it mean that those who can afford to pay for services should not or cannot?The central core of the Canada Health Act was a clause that would see the federal government make dollar-for-dollar reductions in cash transfers to the provinces and territories that allowed patients...
The act’s accessibility clause was intended to address financial barriers to access. But lawmakers never envisioned the possibility that 6.5 million Canadians would not have a family doctor, that waiting months or years for surgery would be commonplace, that emergency rooms would be full of patients spending days on stretchers in hallways, and that virtual care could erase provincial boundaries.
In other countries with universal health care, especially in Europe and more specifically Scandinavia, health laws are highly definitional. They make clear which health services are covered publicly, and which are not. Regulations are also updated regularly, to adapt to changing needs.“No one thought it would go untouched for 40 years,” says Bill Tholl, a senior policy adviser for Monique Bégin back in 1984.
Ms. Flood, who has spent much of her career fighting legal challenges like that one, said most of the cases have been “by doctors promoting private, for-profit care because they wanted to make more money.” What she would like to see in the future are challenges to the law by patients who want timely access to health care in the public system.