Feb 19, 2019 @ 9:17<\/b><\/p>\n
It\u2019s no secret that the cost of just getting by is going up for Canadians.\u00a0 Even when we find a little relief on one front, it seems there is another way to make life more expensive to counteract that.\u00a0 That\u2019s why more than half of Canadians are $200 or less away from not being able to pay bills and helps explain why more people are forced to make difficult choices such as the one between groceries or prescription medicine.\u00a0 Yet Canada is well positioned to help eliminate that particular problem if we make the right choice about how pharmacare is instituted.\u00a0 To do that we must bring in a comprehensive program that helps maximize health care dollars and avoid a program that helps drug providers and insurance companies more than it helps people who can\u2019t afford the drugs they need.<\/p>\n
But we already know the direction the government favours from the Finance Minister\u2019s speech at the Economic Club of Canada shortly after the 2018 budget mentioned pharmacare. That\u2019s when he stated we would be preserving much of the current system which is responsible for high drug prices in the first place.\u00a0 Anyone who pays for their drugs won\u2019t be shocked to learn that Canada has one of the highest per-capita rates of pharmaceutical in the OECD.\u00a0 The limited pharmacare system the government is favoring won\u2019t put a dent in that because it is only through bulk buying that those costs can be reduced.<\/p>\n
Right now, Canada is the only industrialized country with a public healthcare system that does not include coverage for prescription drugs. The New Democrats are proposing a medication-coverage-for-all plan that will include the costs of prescription drugs into Canada\u2019s existing healthcare system and will utilize the negotiating power of 37 million Canadians to lower the overall costs of drugs.\u00a0 But when the government plan was leaked to media last week it confirmed that they are still unwilling to go beyond a \u2018limited\u2019 and \u2018industry-friendly model of pharmacare\u2019.<\/p>\n
The big winners in that scenario are the pharmaceutical and insurance companies.\u00a0 Lost in the shuffle are those Canadians who can\u2019t afford the medication they need.\u00a0 This only drives up health care costs in other areas because too many Canadians ( 1 in 5) skip the medicine they need, end up in the ER, or cut their pills in half because they can\u2019t afford the cost of their medication.\u00a0 Those are avoidable outcomes, but the government\u2019s leaked plan won\u2019t help much.<\/p>\n
Going ahead with a limited plan will only muddy the waters and weaken the idea of pharmacare in most people\u2019s minds.\u00a0 Advocates can look at electoral reform as a comparable.\u00a0 Despite the Prime Minister\u2019s clear promise that 2015 was going to be the last election under a first-past-the post system, we are about to embark on another one in the fall.\u00a0 If pharmacare is watered down to a system that doesn\u2019t reduce costs for fear of upsetting pharmaceutical and insurance companies, people might believe that it doesn\u2019t really do anything \u2013 and in that scenario they would be right.\u00a0 But, again, it doesn\u2019t have to be that way.<\/p>\n
Canadians deserve their health care dollars to be spent in a way that promotes better outcomes.\u00a0 They deserve a system that puts their interests first which a universal, public, comprehensive pharmacare system would do.\u00a0 The government is preparing their last budget before the next election and have the opportunity to do what\u2019s right.\u00a0 The only question is whether they have the belly to stand up to insurance and drug companies instead of setting the table for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Feb 19, 2019 @ 9:17 It\u2019s no secret that the cost of just getting by is going up for Canadians.\u00a0 Even when we find a little relief on one front, it seems there is another way to make life more expensive to counteract that.\u00a0 That\u2019s why more than half of Canadians are $200 or less …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":1095,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[349],"class_list":["post-19516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-federal","tag-carol-hughes"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-17 10:59:27","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19516"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19517,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19516\/revisions\/19517"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}