Universal Pharmacare in Canada: A Prescription for Equity in Healthcare

National Pharmacare in Canada: Equality or Equity, Accessibility or Affordability; Comment on “Universal Pharmacare in Canada: A Prescription for Equity in Healthcare”

Canada’s federal government intends to take steps to implement national pharmacare so that all Canadians have prescription drug coverage they need at an affordable price. Relatively limited funds have so far been pledged to support national pharmacare, which raises the question: what kind of program is envisioned? Since the government has already introduced regulations intended to reduce new dr...

It Won’t Be Easy: How to Make Universal Pharmacare Work in Canada

One of the glaring gaps in Canada’s universal healthcare system is the low level of public financing of prescription drugs - 42.7% of total spending in 2018. At the federal level there is renewed interest in moving towards universal coverage, supported by a recently commissioned report on how to achieve it. It will take superb political navigation to extract Canadian ph...

It’s Time to Finally Kill the Zombies; Comment on “Universal Pharmacare in Canada”

The movement for a national pharmacare plan in Canada is growing, but at the same time the multinational pharmaceutical companies and their supporters are critical of such a move. The three major arguments that they make are that all that is needed is to “fill in the gaps,” ie, cover those who currently are uninsured or underinsured, that private drug plans are superior to public ones because t...

Canada can afford universal pharmacare – no more excuses.