Ontario’s Reaction

In Ontario, the Conservative government of George S. Henry offered to subsidize medical relief costs at 50 per cent of the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) fee schedule to a maximum of $100 per month per doctor. This proposal upset the OMA because it hinted at state intervention in the doctor–patient relationship, but the province’s municipalities and 35 per cent of its doctors were sufficiently desperate for support that they joined the plan in 1933. As a result, the OMA began to support the concept of province-wide health insurance, but the election of Mitchell Hepburn’s Liberals in 1934 effectively removed that option, since Hepburn turned the responsibility for administering medical relief over to the OMA. This non-governmental organization directed the program until the late1960s, when it became part of the Ontario Medical Services Insurance Plan.