Medicare (Canada) - History

History

The first implementation of public hospital care in Canada came at the provincial level in Saskatchewan in 1946 and in Alberta in 1950, under provincial governments led by the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and the Social credit party respectively. The first implementation of nationalized public health care -at the federal level- came about with the Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services act (HIDS), which was passed by the Liberal majority government of Louis St. Laurent in 1957, and was adopted by all provinces by 1961. Lester B. Pearson's government subsequently expanded this policy to universal health care with the Medical Care Act in 1966. Some have argued that these developments towards public national health care came as a result of the Saskatchewan government's health plan in 1961-1962 by Douglas and Woodrow Stanley Lloyd, who became premier of the province when Douglas resigned to become the leader of the new federal New Democratic Party, though the medicare legislation itself was actually drafted (and first proposed to parliament) by Allan MacEachen, a Liberal MP from Cape Breton.

Read more about this topic:  Medicare (Canada)

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.
    Thomas Paine (1737–1809)