Abstract

A key focus of health care reform in countries with low density rural populations has been the effort to ensure that rural and remote residents receive accessible, high quality health care despite the challenges associated with delivering that care in a cost effective manner. Using an organizational power and politics framework that represents reform as a socio-political process of contested change, this study examines rural views about problems with Canada’s publicly financed health care system and assesses the struggle for collaboration to define rural priorities for reform and the struggle for ascendancy to acquire resources to finance the rural vision of reform in a policy making context dominated by conflicting interests and scarce resources.