Healthcare Saskatchewan's Ministry of Health is responsible for policy direction, sets and monitors standards, and provides funding for regional health authorities and provincial health services. Saskatchewan's health system is a single-payer system. Medical practitioners in Saskatchewan are independent contractors. They remit their accounts to the publicly funded Saskatchewan Medical Care Insurance Plan, which pays the accounts. Patients do not pay anything to their doctors or hospitals for medical care. In 1944, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), a left-wing agrarian and labour party, won the provincial election in Saskatchewan and formed the first socialist government in North American history. Repeatedly re-elected, the CFC campaigned in the early 1960s on the theme of universal health coverage and, after winning the election again, implemented it, the first in Canada. However, it was fiercely opposed by the province's doctors' union, which went on a massive strike the day the new system came into effect. Supported by the Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce, most newspapers and the right-wing Keep Our Doctors movement, the doctors' union ran an effective communications campaign portraying the universal health care system as a communist scheme that would spread disease. The strike, which had become very unpopular because of the outrageous rhetoric of some of its leaders (one of them had called for bloodshed), finally ended after a few weeks, and universal health coverage was adopted by the whole country five years later. Government and politics Saskatchewan has the same form of government as the other Canadian provinces with a lieutenant-governor (who is the representative of the King in Right of Saskatchewan), premier, and a unicameral legislature. During the 20th century, Saskatchewan was one of Canada's more left-wing provinces, reflecting the slant of its many rural citizens which distrusted the distant capital government and which favored a strong local government to attend to their issues. In 1944 Tommy Douglas became premier of the first avowedly socialist regional government in North America. Most of his Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) represented rural and small-town ridings. Under his Cooperative Commonwealth Federation government, Saskatchewan became the first province to have Medicare. In 1961, Douglas left provincial politics to become the first leader of the federal New Democratic Party. In the 21st century, Saskatchewan began to drift to the right-wing, generally attributed to the province's economy shifting toward oil and gas production. In the 2015 federal election, the Conservative Party of Canada won ten of