Commentary
For centuries health care was, for the most part, privately delivered by independent physicians. But during the West’s 20th-century collectivist moment, medical care became a common priority for reform by liberal and socialist governments.
One of the first models for modern health-care systems dates back to Otto von Bismarck’s compulsory health insurance, introduced in the German Empire in 1884. Britain’s National Insurance Act of 1911 was the first step toward universal health care within the British Empire.
Socialized medicine arrived in Canada in the wake of World War II. In 1947, the government of Saskatchewan introduced a province-wide universal hospital care plan and other provinces soon followed suit….