The foundations of National public hospital insurance.

This paper provides the background to provincial and federal government acceptance of a public hospital insurance plan. I describe the development of two-tiered hospitals to the 1920s and the failure of private hospital financing as the Depression unfolded. I then discuss developments in Saskatchewan climaxing in the first provincial public hospital insurance plan and the continuing fiscal stresses facing hospitals in provinces without public plans. Finally, I outline the main reasons why all the provinces signed onto a national public hospital insurance plan.

Bennettcare to Medicare: the morphing of Medicare care insurance in British Columbia.

Introduced as a federal-provincial cost-sharing program in the 1960s, Canadian Medicare arose in the context of competing provincial models implemented by Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia. This article examines Bennettcare in British Columbia which, unlike the Saskatchewan and Alberta models, has never been analysed historically. Named after Premier W. A. C. Bennett, Bennettcare initially attempted to balance public support for a government-sponsored health insurance program with the free enterprise ideology espoused by the followers of Social Credit, the insurance industry, and the British Columbia Medical Association. However, in order to receive cost-sharing dollars from the federal government, Bennett was eventually compelled to change the design features in order to comply with the federal government's requirements of universality and public administration, morphing Bennettcare into Saskatchewan-style Medicare.

Newfoundland's Cottage Hospital System: 1920-1970.

This article examines the origins, development, and evolution of the Newfoundland Cottage Hospital System (NCHS)--one of North America's earliest efforts at publicly funded health care that involved the establishment of small "cottage" hospitals staffed by salaried medical personnel. The NCHS is compared with the Highlands and Islands Medical Service and cottage hospitals of Scotland which the established historical accounts suggest were the principal models for the Newfoundland system. The importance of the Newfoundland experience for the development of Canada's national hospital insurance program is explained. The article concludes with an examination of the issue of salary remuneration within the NCHS.

[The state and the for-profit hospital in Quebec, 1961-1975: a disappointing experience of partnership]. / L'etat et l'hôpital a but lucratif au Québec, 1961-1975: une expérience décevante de partenariat.

In 1961, public hospital insurance created a new form of public-private partnership in Quebec by paying for care given in for-profit (proprietary) hospitals. How did it work? How did for-profit hospitals deal with governmental norms and regulations? Why and how was the door closed on the development of for-profit hospitals after a few years of experimentation? On the whole, this partnership proved to be chaotic and inefficient, plagued by endless negotiations. During the seventies, the government appears finally to have concluded that the partnership was not worthwhile. Public-private partnership in the hospital sector, then, existed well before the federal initiatives but has been largely forgotten, despite the reappearance of similar debates.

[The century-long trends of the French hospital system: an analysis in terms of regulation]. / La dynamique séculaire du système hospitalier français: une analyse en termes de régulation.

This article is an inquiry about growth of hospitals expenses. The analysis is founded on the long term construction of monetary series. These series show evidence of three characteristics: growth of hospitals expenses between 1815 and 1993, development trough a succession of stages, existence of long term cyclic fluctuations contrary to the Kondratieff's movements.