Final Report of the Advisory Council on the Implementation of National Pharmacare:
https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/corporate/about-health-canada/public-engagement/external-advisory-bodies/implementation-national-pharmacare/final-report.html
Message from the Chair
Canadians have considered the idea of universal drug coverage, as a complement to universal health care, for over five decades. For such a long-standing debate there is a surprising level of consensus. After hearing from many thousands of Canadians, we found a strongly held, shared belief that everyone in Canada should have access to prescription drugs based on their need and not their ability to pay, and delivered in a manner that is fair and sustainable. That’s why our council has recommended that Canada implement universal, single-payer, public pharmacare.
If the promise of universal health care is that Canadians are there for each other when we’re sick, by not including prescription drugs we’re placing a limit on that commitment. We may enter the hospital or the doctor’s office with equal access to health care, but we don’t go home with the same prospects for a healthier future, because prescription drug coverage varies greatly from person to person, and from province to province. There are too many people in our country who die prematurely or suffer needlessly in ill health because cost is a barrier to accessing prescription drugs.
This gap—between our values and our reality—is growing because the nature of medicine is changing. When universal health care was first proposed, prescription drugs were important but not as commonly used and much less expensive. Today, drugs are the second-largest cost in Canadian health care, after hospitals and ahead of physician services. We heard from both public and private prescription drug providers that the current system is near the breaking point and in need of significant, even transformational, reform. The common refrain we heard from Canadians: we have to do better.
Even though many Canadians have some form of coverage, Canada relies on a confusing patchwork of over 100 public prescription drug plans and over 100,000 private plans—with a variety of premiums, copayments, deductibles and annual limits. For a family or a single patient with a complex condition, those costs can add up to a significant barrier. Approximately 20 per cent of Canadians have inadequate drug coverage or no coverage at all and must pay out of pocket. A recent study found almost 1 million Canadians had cut their household spending on food and heat to pay for medication. Another found that one in five households reported a family member who, in the past year, had not taken a prescribed medicine due to its cost.
This uneven, inconsistent and tenuous patchwork in no way resembles a “system.” There is no single, uniform method in Canada for a child with asthma to get her inhaler. It depends on her family’s coverage. There is no one consistent way that all cancer patients obtain take-home cancer drugs or medicines for coping with chemotherapy side effects. Some pay more. Some pay less. Some don’t have access to those medicines at all.
Over the past year, we saw provinces and territories taking action, working hard to provide better prescription drug coverage, but we also concluded that the federal government can and should do more, working in partnership with provincial and territorial governments, to ensure all Canadians can access the medicines they need.
There is a cost to universal pharmacare and we understand that governments have fiscal limits. But universal, single-payer, public pharmacare can save billions by lowering the price we pay for prescription medicines and by avoiding the greater costs that accumulate when a manageable condition becomes a serious health crisis or when complications develop because someone could not afford to take medicine as prescribed. It might be the person recently laid off who stops taking medicines for preventing heart attack or stroke. They don’t feel an immediate, daily difference when they take those pills. So, they question the expense when money is tight. They mean to get back on the medicine when they get back on their feet. But time runs out. They end up in an emergency room in crisis. They may now need ongoing home care. Any return to work is delayed or maybe never happens. Barriers to accessing prescribed medication can and do result in additional visits to the doctor’s office, emergency departments and hospital inpatient wards, all costing our society much more than the cost of that preventive medicine. Improving access to prescription medicine improves health outcomes, reduces health care visits, and saves billions in downstream health care costs.
Our current fractured system also weakens Canada’s negotiating position with pharmaceutical companies. We pay some of the highest drug prices in the world. Other countries with universal pharmacare get better deals for the same drugs. Without price reductions, our public and private drug plans will continue to be strained. Pharmaceutical research is producing a new generation of drugs that offer transformational benefits particularly for sufferers of chronic conditions and rare diseases. However, many of these drugs have costs that reach into the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars per person, per year. Such developments were not imagined when universal health care was enacted without prescription drug coverage. Canada can meet this challenge, but we need the purchasing power and unified effort of all 37 million Canadians. Already, employer-sponsored plans are having to increase premiums and copayments, and reduce health benefits, because of the growing cost of drugs. More and more drug costs are being passed down to employees. We heard from employers who question how long they can continue to afford to provide drug coverage at all.
Given the changing nature of work and the rising use and cost of drugs, we can’t be certain how many Canadians will have adequate drug coverage in the years ahead. If you believe that the concept of universal health care is part of who we are as Canadians, and I certainly do, then shouldn’t our understanding of that concept change with us—as our country, our economy and the practice of medicine evolve?
In Canada, we know that great national projects can go well beyond building things that we can see with our eyes. Canadians also build programs and initiatives that we can feel in our hearts. Among the generation who launched universal health care fifty years ago were people who had once looked at doctor’s bills and worried how they would pay. They enabled their governments to create a program so that no one in Canada would have that worry again. Today, most of us have never even seen an invoice from a doctor or a bill from a hospital, through the joys of childbirth, the pain of injury or the trials of illness. That’s just the Canada we know—and love.
We, too, can be the kind of generation that builds a national project that changes Canada for the better. Someday in the not-too-distant future, it is within our grasp that every Canadian could walk away from the pharmacy counter with what they need to get better and live better. We can fulfil that original promise of universal care, of being there for one another, and create a future where no Canadian goes without the medicine they need. That will simply, and proudly, be the Canada our children and grandchildren know and love. Ours can be the last generation to look at a prescription and worry how to pay.
Our council has heard the stories of thousands of Canadians and listened to a wide range of perspectives. The time for universal, single-payer, public pharmacare has come. This is our generation’s national project: better access to the medicines we need, improved health outcomes and a fairer and more sustainable prescription medicine system. Let’s complete the unfinished business of universal health care. That can be our promise, and our legacy, to each other and to all future generations.
Dr. Eric Hoskins, OC, MSC, DPhil, MSc, MD, FRCPC
Chair, Advisory Council on the Implementation of National Pharmacare
On behalf of Council members:
Dr. Nadine Caron
Vincent Dumez
Mia Homsy
Camille Orridge
Hon. Diana Whalen
John Wright