The Canada Health Act (CHA) is a piece of Canadian federal legislation, adopted in 1984, which specifies the conditions and criteria with which the provincial and territorial health insurance programs must conform in order to receive federal transfer payments under the Canada Health Transfer . These criteria require universal coverage (for all "insured persons") of insured procedures for all "medically necessary" hospital and physician services, without co-payments.
The CHA deals only with how the system is financed. Because of the constitutional division of powers among levels of government, adherence to CHA conditions is voluntary. However, the fiscal levers have helped to ensure a relatively consistent level of coverage across the country. Although there are disputes as to the details, the CHA remains highly popular.
In popular discussion, the CHA is often conflated with the health care system in general. However, the CHA is silent about how care should be organized and delivered, as long as its criteria are met.
Another cause for debate is the scope of what should be included as "insured services". For historical reasons, the CHA's definition of insured services is largely restricted to care delivered in hospitals or by physicians. As care has moved from hospitals to home and community, it increasingly has been moving beyond the terms of the CHA. International data shows that approximately 70% of Canadian health expenditures are paid from public sources, placing Canada below the OECD average.
Read more about Canada Health Act: History: Federalism, The 1984 Act
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“I fear that I have not got much to say about Canada, not having seen much; what I got by going to Canada was a cold.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The sick man is taken away by the institution that takes charge not of the individual, but of his illness, an isolated object transformed or eliminated by technicians devoted to the defense of health the way others are attached to the defense of law and order or tidiness.”
—Michel de Certeau (1925–1986)
“I wish my countrymen to consider that whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it. A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length even become the laughing-stock of the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)