Is pharmacare a socialist plan our country can’t afford?
In an interview with the newspaper The Carillon last week, House of Commons member Ted Falk, contends that introducing pharmacare benefits as the Liberal government proposes in its latest budget, is both dangerously socialist and fiscally imprudent.
Interestingly Canada is the only country with a universal health care plan that does not include coverage for prescription medication. Countries like Great Britain, France, New Zealand, and Germany all do. Would Mr. Falk consider these countries to be dangerously socialist?
The proposal for initiating pharmaceutical benefits begins with coverage for diabetes medication and birth control pills. This seems fiscally prudent.
2024 research studies carried out by The Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada and The Canadian Cancer Society revealed that 22% of Canadians don’t take medicines prescribed by their physicians because they can’t afford them.
The studies also state 28% of Canadians are making difficult choices so they can afford their medications like buying fewer groceries, delaying rent or utility bill payments, or going into debt. It is easy to see why these realities could lead to outcomes much more costly for taxpayers than simply paying for people’s prescriptions.
The final report from the Advisory Council on the Implementation of National Pharmacare says rather than being fiscally imprudent a universal, single-payer, public pharmacare system will save billions of dollars by bringing down the price of drugs, and avoiding all the costs that accumulate when what could have been manageable medical conditions like diabetes become full-blown health crises.
People with diabetes who don’t take their prescribed medication because they can’t afford it end up making many more visits to clinics and hospital emergency wards. Improving access to medication could result in substantial savings in downstream health care costs for diabetes patients.
It is puzzling to me why a politician like Mr. Falk who has made his anti-abortion stance abundantly clear would be opposed to a pharmacare plan that provides free birth control.
Research shows providing free and easy access to birth control can reduce abortion rates. In one Louisiana study making free birth control available to residents reduced the abortion rate by 62%. For six years beginning in 2009 Colorado offered teens and low-income women free IUD’s and implants. In just four years the state’s abortion rate dropped by 40%.
And providing free birth control is fiscally prudent. Last year an article in the Winnipeg Free Press outlined the high cost to society of unwanted pregnancies citing an American study that showed for every $1 invested in providing free contraception a saving of $7 in future health care costs was realized.
We would also do well to listen to medical experts who have hands on experience in the field. For the past five years the Canadian Pediatric Society, The Canadian Medical Association and the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologist of Canada have been recommending free birth control access for Canadians. I suspect they may know more about the matter than politicians.
There are plenty of opinions about what a national pharmacare program should look like. Ken Collier, a Saskatoon social worker writing in Canadian Dimension Magazine last week calls the pharmacare proposals in the most recent budget weak and hesitant. While Mr. Falk would like the program scraped completely, Collier and many others would argue for a much more robust and comprehensive national pharmacare program.
I think however covering diabetes and birth control prescriptions is a prudent and logical first step to bringing Canada in line with the dozens of other capitalist democracies who have discovered the benefits of providing affordable pharmaceuticals to citizens.
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And also importantly Canada now has a dental plan for those not covered by a private plan having a family income below $90k/yr. The plan costing $13B already has 1 million people signed up and this is expected to rise to 9 million people when fully deployed. It is to begin this week starting first for seniors 70 and older. It’s expected the plan will cover all age groups sometime next year.
While my own family has private medical and dental plans we are happy that all Canadians will soon be afforded with these important services. Good things come from minority governments and may this continue!
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