Many people who have coverage have it through their employer, so if they lost their job during the pandemic, then they have also lost their drug coverage. It would have been a very timely move to actually push forward on implementing pharmacare. The Liberals have been dragging their feet and have delayed. There have been multiple promises and multiple delays, and there's been huge lobbying by the pharma industry in order to delay the process, because the broader public benefit that we would see from pharmacare would come from lower pharmaceutical profits.
Let's be clear that there would be losers in the system. However, pharmaceutical profits are currently skyrocketing because they're benefiting from public investment in research. This is another example of how we simply don't have the structures right in order to make our investments matter and in order to benefit people when they need it.
It's a huge problem. We have people who can't afford insulin, who can't afford antibiotics and who can't afford, as you say, life-saving heart medication, so it's so critical. We're the only country in the world that has universal health care but doesn't have free medicine.