Money, Politics and Health Care: Reconstructing the Federal-Provincial Partnership

Alain Lamothe is the electronic services librarian at the J.N. Desmarais
Library, Laurentian University.

Money, Politics and Health Care looks at the key issues in the
federal–provincial health-care relationship. It is based on reports
prepared for the Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada,
which presented recommendations on the sustainability of a publicly
funded health system.

The first of the book’s five well-written chapters establishes the
context of the problems with federal involvement in health care. Also
discussed in the book are the reasons for government involvement in
health care, the rapidly increasing costs of health care since the
1990s, and the role of insurance companies in health care. Six models
for dispute resolution are proposed, ranging from a Canada-wide cost
sharing, to obtaining public input, to complete federal withdrawal.
Valuable comparisons are drawn between the health-care system in Canada
and its counterparts in other countries.

Tables and charts supplement the main text. Each chapter ends with an
excellent summary followed by a list of notes and annotations. The
bibliography is located at the end of the book; a more user-friendly
approach would have been to produce separate bibliographies for the end
of each chapter. Overall, this is a good resource for anyone who wants
to read about the commission without having to go through its broad
reports.