Health Care in Canada: Organization, Financing, and Access

Morris L. Barer & Robert G. Evans

Centre for Health Services and Policy Research & The University of British Columbia

The Canadian health care system took its modern form between 1968 and 1971, and its fundamental principles and basic structural features of organization and finance have remained the same since that time. The system has evolved over the past three decades, and has adapted more or less successfully both to significant changes in the external environment and to the changing needs and possibilities of health care services themselves. But it remains easily recognizable as the same system that was established more than thirty years ago.