CALGARY (Staff) — In a way, the shift from hospital-centred care to community or home-based treatment and illness prevention is the second phase of the medicare revolution.
The founders of medicare always intended to keep revising the system.
It has taken more than three decades to get around to reform of the delivery system. Former Saskatchewan CCF premier Tommy Douglas unveiled his concept of a universal, prepaid health care system in 1961.
He didn’t invent medicare. The groundwork had been laid on the Prairies in the 1920s when municipalities began to use property-tax revenue to pay general practicioners.
Douglas elevated the concept to one of universal coverage paid for by the provincial government with the Saskatchewan Medicaal Care Insurance Act.
Medicare’s founders set down the five principles for a Canadian health care system: fee prepayment; universal coverage; high-quality service; care levels acceptable to patient and caregiver; and government legislative responsibility.
The system created in Saskatchewan in 1962 spread across Canada through that decade.
