Health committee  This is an excellent question. First, there are alternatives, and this is something very important. We need to understand that more and more the type of research and development that is being done in pharmaceuticals is requiring us to go outside the patent model. Basically, paten

Health committee  I completely agree. Early on, the efforts to find new vaccines were impressive. Many were developed. Now, pharmaceutical companies are signing confidential agreements with countries to deliver vaccines. We saw how quickly Pfizer-BioNTech ran into production issues—hence, this we

Health committee  Thank you for your question. Take the AstraZeneca vaccine, for example. It was developed by the University of Oxford. Initially, the university had pledged to offer nonexclusive, royalty-free licences for its vaccine, but ultimately went back on its decision, opting to give Astr

Health committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning. My remarks will focus on COVID-19 vaccines as they relate to research and development and manufacturing. I am an associate professor in Carleton University's School of Public Policy and Administration. My research focuses on the political ec

Health committee  In terms of drug costs, there are two things: price and volume. On the issue of price, we're doing a bad job in terms of pricing, so we could reduce price. For that, basically a national formulary is the best tool to build bargaining power. In terms of volume, it's promoting a ra

Health committee  Yes, absolutely. The $5 billion in waste among private plans is a number by a pharmacy benefits manager, Express Scripts Canada. On administration costs, you mentioned $9 billion. Keep in mind that you have $5 billion in waste and you have $1.4 billion in tax subsidies, so basica

Health committee  There are a variety of regimes with very different terms and conditions. In the end, in terms of tiered copayment, for example, in France the problem is that you have complementary insurance. You have a system to promote or guide the use of the most cost-effective prescription

Health committee  As I mentioned, we need to consider tax subsidies as well. It depends on how you want to do the financing of the disparity in the numbers. As I said, you can go with a payroll tax. We have one of the lowest corporate tax rates, but at the same time implementing universal pharmaca

Health committee  Absolutely.

Health committee  On the macroeconomic impact of introducing universal pharmacare, in terms of additional public spending, you can do that with an increase in corporate tax because of the savings on labour costs. You could do it with a payroll tax, earmarked tax revenues, whatever the solution, bu

Health committee  The first thing you need is an evidence-based formulary. Prescribing habits must be based on evidence-based medicine, not on the promotional campaigns of drug companies. This is very important. In terms of these conflicts of interest, for example, we're talking a lot about the

Health committee  I would like to add that one of the trends we're seeing right now in terms of what I saw in conferences by human resources management and collective insurance group managers is a lot of what we call coordination between private plans and public plans. A lot of provinces are offe

Health committee  Absolutely nothing. The Council of the Federation has taken major steps in that direction in building the pCPA, building collaboration among provinces. I would really like to see something like pCPA with CADTH and PMPRB merging to create a national agency to manage a national pha

Health committee  The problem we have right now with this fragmentation between the way we pay for drugs and the way we pay for other health care services in an establishment, in hospitals, is that we have a lot of cost-shifting. With the new wave of oral anti-cancer drugs, for example, we don't n

Health committee  Yes, absolutely.