Final Report of the Advisory Council on the Implementation of National Pharmacare
Chair Advisory Council on the Implementation of National Pharmacare : Dr. Eric Hoskins
[Excerpts]
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.
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.
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.
The council proposes the five fundamental principles of medicare, embodied in the Canada Health Act, be applied to national pharmacare
Universal: all residents of Canada should have equal access to a national pharmacare system;
Comprehensive: pharmacare should provide a broad range of safe, effective, evidence-based treatments;
Accessible: access to prescription drugs should be based on medical need, not ability to pay;
Portable: pharmacare benefits should be portable across provinces and territories when people travel or move; and
Public: a national pharmacare system should be publicly funded and administered.
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(PDF format, 3.11 MB, 184 pages)
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