Thank you very much.
My name is Anita Huberman. I'm CEO of the Surrey Board of Trade, and thank you for listening to the business perspective on universal pharmacare benefits for businesses.
The Surrey Board of Trade is the second largest in B.C., with a membership of over 2,100 small, medium, and large businesses in shipping and transportation industries, manufacturing, high tech, consultants, non-profits, and small commercial enterprises.
The Surrey Board of Trade has prepared motions in favour of a universal public pharmacare system that improves coverage for all Canadians. The reason we have taken this position is that our members have expressed serious concerns in a number of areas.
There are strains on all businesses. Costs are high and uncontrolled for those who do offer drug coverage. Costs are an impediment for some companies to offer any coverage. There are concerns that a catastrophic public drug plan like B.C.'s still places a major burden on sponsors of private plans. Businesses are also very concerned about government passing a law that would make private insurance mandatory, as in Quebec.
When businesses come to us with concerns such as these, we have to respond by investigating and determining a policy direction that would best serve our members, the businesses of Surrey, British Columbia.
What we found is that there are inequities in access to care. Businesses care about the health and well-being of their employees, their families, and their communities, but the uncontrolled cost of private drug coverage in Canada means that our system has many gaps in coverage. We know that the committee has already heard that at least one in 10 Canadians does not take medications as prescribed because of cost.
Studies in the Canadian Medical Association Journal and by the Angus Reid Institute both indicate that access to medicine is particularly bad in B.C. This is because the deductibles under B.C.'s catastrophic public drug plan have been shown to reduce the use of preventative treatments that patients do not necessarily prioritize in ways that the health care system would want them to.
In the end, we all pay more when patients don't get the medications they need, because they end up in hospital, which can cost taxpayers a lot more than appropriate prescription drugs would cost in the first instance.
Inefficiencies of fragmented coverage is the next area. Businesses know better than anyone else how important it is to focus on core competency and to maximize the efficiencies of those processes. Canadian businesses are therefore concerned that the fragmented nature of drug coverage in Canada results in excess administrative costs, reduced purchasing power, and a silo mentality that may limit the overall efficiency of Canada's medicare system.
There is no doubt that the fragmentation of drug price negotiating power in Canada means higher drug costs. You have already heard government officials and academic experts say that our drug prices are higher in Canada than in comparable countries worldwide. I don't need to repeat the statistics that more informed experts can provide, but businesses are increasingly aware that the inefficiencies of the system are a drag on their competitiveness.
In our research we found a report by Express Scripts Canada that says $5 billion is paid out every year by employers and unions in order to cover poor drug choices and unnecessarily expensive pharmacy services, but individual businesses and employee groups are not in the best position to rein in these costs.
One of the problems with our system is that private insurance for drugs and public insurance for medical care creates a silo between the management of those critical parts of our health care system. It would be more efficient for the costs of medically necessary prescription drugs to be managed along with the budgets for other forms of care. In the Canadian context, that means it makes the most sense for those costs to be managed by provincial governments, in co-operation with each other and with the federal government.
Uncontrolled drug costs are a lost opportunity to improve workplace health. Having a universal public pharmacare system would not put an end to workplace benefits. On the contrary, it would provide an opportunity to enhance those benefits. The high price of medications today, many of which now come to market at prices of tens of thousands of dollars per patient per year, require coverage and cost-control policies out of the reach of the private sector in Canada.
It will be for tax experts to decide exactly how to fund a universal pharmacare program. Businesses in Canada must be at the table in negotiating that funding mechanism, but businesses would support the movement towards a public pharmacare program that achieved system-level savings that we would all benefit from. Importantly, the private sector in Canada can use the funding freed up by a more efficient pharmacare system to make other important investments in the health of our employees and in our families.
Governments have cut public coverage for a wide range of services that Canadians need. Vision care, dental care, hearing care, physiotherapy, and mental health are all areas where employers and unions could make new investments with savings stemming from the savings created through a universal public pharmacare program. These other benefits are essential to patients and, from a business perspective, they are more predictable and manageable than the now out-of-control costs of pharmaceuticals in Canada.
In conclusion, the Surrey Board of Trade firmly supports a universal public pharmacare program that would use bulk purchasing and evidence-based coverage policy to improve and assess medicines while lowering costs for all Canadians. We firmly hope that this committee of Parliament will understand that it is important to have the right system in place—and we're pleased to have you considering this today—a system that is equitable, efficient, and aligned with the other core components of health care in Canada.
We would respectfully request that the committee let businesses focus on running their businesses by putting the management of universal drug coverage in Canada in the hands of those managing our universal health care system. Businesses would support a policy that did this fairly and efficiently.
Thank you so much for the opportunity to allow me to speak to the committee this afternoon.