ABSTRACT
Despite their close kinship, the United States and Canada have evolved very different health care systems. Key features of the Quebec health care system include mechanisms for the planning and coordination of services and institutions, for the evaluation of health programs, and for regulation of the health professions, especially medicine. Regulation of the health professions, the first and foremost being medicine, is also an integral part of the system. A sweeping reform of the laws regulating the health professions in Canada occurred in Quebec with the enactment of the Professional Code in 1973. Unlike other provinces and most industrialized countries, the medical profession in Quebec is becoming more and more feminine. While general practitioners' earnings are "controlled" on an individual basis, specialists' earnings are controlled on a collective basis, per specialty. For the profession as a whole, negotiated fee increases are implemented in steps, conditional on the rate of increase in use.
