Abstract
The Canadian health care system is a publicly funded system based on the philosophy that health is a right, not a commodity. The system has been able to all provide all qualified Canadian residents with universal access to all medically necessary services. Its establishment was, and continues to be, opposed by organized Canadian medicine. Of late, it has encountered funding problems because of a flagging Canadian economy. Other problems are posed by Canada’s constitutional division of powers, its geographic vastness and a move to regionalization of provincial health care administrations. Moreover, aboriginal health lags behind national standards. Still other challenges are posed by recent legal and technological innovations. Nevertheless, despite highly publicized shortfalls in individual cases, the system functions well and is likely to meet these challenges.
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Kluge, EH.W. (2002). Health Care as a Right. In: Loewy, E.H., Loewy, R.S. (eds) Changing Health Care Systems from Ethical, Economic, and Cross Cultural Perspectives. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-46846-8_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-46846-8_3
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