The New Democratic Party has called on the Liberals to start targeting a small number of essential medicines as negotiations continue behind the scenes on developing a pharmaceutical health care system.
A senior NDP official who was not authorized to speak publicly told CBC that the NDP has asked the Liberals to not only enact the Pharmacare Act, but also to start covering some life-saving drugs for conditions such as diabetes. Ta.
An NDP official close to the negotiations said the Liberals had agreed to target fewer than five drugs. Health Minister Mark Holland’s office has not confirmed the report.
NDP officials said they expect coverage to begin sooner rather than later, but could not say exactly when.
Under the NDP-Liberal Supply and Confidence Agreement (in which the NDP supports the minority Liberal government in a vote of confidence in exchange for movement on the New Democratic Party’s policy priorities), Canada will draft legislation outlining principles for pharmacare. and plans to start applying Pharmacare for some drugs by 2025.
According to the text of the agreement, governments are not required to “develop a national formulary and bulk purchasing plan for essential medicines by the end of the agreement.”
NDP health critic Don Davis would not say to reporters whether the Liberals and NDP were in talks about speeding up the application of some drugs. CBC asked Davis whether he expected new spending on pharmacare to be curbed in the Liberals’ 2024 budget.
“Not necessarily,” he answered.
Davis said the NDP’s main focus is on developing a legal framework for pharmacare.
“We’re not talking about spending a few years down the line,” he told reporters Thursday during a break from the NDP caucus in Edmonton.
“Our focus now is fighting for the right way to get prescription drugs to Canadians, and that’s the public system.”
The New Democratic Party and Liberal Party have set a new deadline of March 1 to submit the Pharmacare Bill. Davis said he plans to meet with Holland when Congress reconvenes next week.
A senior NDP official said one of the key impasses is the dispute over what pharmacare actually means.
Democratic Party of Japan promotes universal health insurance system
The agreement signed by the Liberals and NDP does not define pharmacare, but New Democrats have advocated for a universal, publicly provided and managed system with a single-payer federal government.
Speaking at a town hall event in Edmonton on Tuesday, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh explained his negotiations with the Liberals.
“Don (Davis) describes working with the Liberal Party as being like fighting an eel in oil,” Singh told the audience, drawing laughter. “They’re just lukewarm. They break their promises. They just say one thing and try to get out of there.”
clock : Jagmeet Singh explains what it’s like to work with the Liberal Party
As the New Democrats negotiate a deal on pharmacare, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh likens working with the Liberals to fighting an eel soaked in oil.
Singh said the NDP wants a pharmacare plan for workers and families. He claimed the Liberals wanted a plan that would please the pharmaceutical industry and “big insurance.”
The president of a group representing the insurance industry is warning against adopting the NDP’s recommended model.
“Single-payer programs would spend billions of dollars needlessly to destroy existing workplace health benefit plans that already make many prescription drugs affordable for millions of people. “It’s going to happen,” said Stephen Frank, president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association. previous statement.
Steve Morgan of the University of British Columbia, one of Canada’s leading experts on the pharmacare system, believes that the introduction of pharmacare will improve the ability of Canadians and hospitals through a single price negotiator and the bulk purchasing power of buyers. said that drug costs will be reduced.
”[It’s] the only system we know [of] “This allows us to balance the extraordinary market power that pharmaceutical companies wield around the world with the strong purchasing power that certain state institutions generate,” Morgan said.
At Monday’s Liberal Cabinet dinner, Prime Minister Holland told reporters the government was operating in a “restrained fiscal environment” and “ambition needs to be reined in.”
A group studying the implementation of national pharmacare programs, led by former Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins, has called on Canada to introduce universal single-payer public pharmacare.
Their report estimates that such a program would cost the federal government $15.3 billion annually, but could save Canada $5 billion in prescription drug spending.
NDP officials say the party is not calling on the government to immediately implement a uniform single-payer pharmacy system, but rather to take an approach that builds it up gradually over time. It is said that there is
This is basically how healthcare was rolled out across the country. In 1957, the City of Ottawa, following in the footsteps of the Saskatchewan government, became the first to offer coverage for hospital visits. Canadians still had to pay for doctor visits.
Lester Pearson’s government introduced the Health Care Act in 1966, proposing to share the cost of doctor services. It was not until 1972 that universal health insurance coverage for physician services became available in all states and territories.
But decades later, Canada became the only developed country in the world with a universal, publicly funded system that does not include prescription drugs.
