Background and Objectives: In May 2003, the government of British Columbia adopted an income-based pharmacare program, replacing the previous age-based program. Stated policy goals included improving the distribution of pharmaceutical payments across incomes. This analysis assesses the policy’s effect on the distribution across incomes of both private payments and public subsidy for prescriptio...

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...

and colleagues present a rigorous and comprehensive examination of pharmacare policy in British Columbia, specifically the introduction of co-payments for seniors in 2002, followed by an income-based " Fair PharmaCare " Program in 2003. Fair PharmaCare achieved its primary objective of reducing public expenditures on pharmaceuticals – an unsurprising accomplishment. Although politically hazardo...

BACKGROUND Reference-based pricing limits reimbursement for a group of drugs that are deemed therapeutically equivalent to the cost of the lowest-priced product within that group. We estimated the effect of reference-based pricing of nitrate drugs used for long-term prophylaxis on prescribing of and expenditures on nitrates and other anti-anginal drugs dispensed to senior citizens in British Co...

BACKGROUND Public prescription drug plans vary markedly across Canada. To address perceived inequities in coverage across provinces, the February 2003 First Ministers' Accord on Health Care Renewal committed to ensuring that all Canadians have reasonable access to catastrophic drug coverage. A national standard for "reasonable" catastrophic coverage has yet to be formally defined. OBJECTIVE T...

BACKGROUND Prescribing of antipsychotics (AP) to young people has increased in the last decade internationally. We aimed to characterize AP prescribing in a population of low-income youth in Nova Scotia, Canada. METHODS We conducted a population database study of AP prescription claims and health services utilization by young people aged 25 years and younger receiving drug benefits through th...

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...