Posted by Michael Wonder on 12 Sep 2019
Public plans covered only 26% of the 491 new drugs approved by Health Canada from 2009 to 2018; national pharmacare is an empty promise for 23.2 million Canadians now covered by private plans
11 September 2019 - Two new studies confirm the abysmal state of access to innovative medicines in Canada’s publicly funded drug plans.
The research, published in the journal Canadian Health Policy, found that public plans cover far fewer new drugs compared to private plans in Canada. Public plans also take much longer to cover new drugs compared to private plans.
The findings are important because the federal government has proposed replacing Canada's private-public prescription drug insurance system with a single-payer national pharmacare program modelled on existing public formularies.
