28 October 2019 - The Ontario government has begun covering $100,000-a-year eye drops for an ultrarare disease, bringing relief to patients but underscoring how the Italian company that makes the drops managed to escape the scrutiny of Canada’s drug price regulator.

Last month, Ontario became the first province to fund Cystadrops, a medication that keeps dangerous crystals from building up in the eyes of people with cystinosis, an inherited metabolic disorder that affects an estimated 100 Canadians.

Other provinces are expected to follow suit, which means taxpayers across the country could soon be spending millions of dollars a year on a commercial version of the cysteamine eye drops that hospital pharmacies used to concoct in house for, at most, a few thousand dollars a year.

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