Some of the advocates who have supported the concept of a public plan talk about the significant savings associated with having one national plan. The concept there is, of course, that you'd have one bargaining unit that would significantly reduce the cost.
Our view is that the concept of having one unit negotiate the cost with the drug companies is a valid one, and we would support that. We believe that could be done through the pCPA. However, if you were to establish tomorrow or next year or whatever date you choose for establishing a single entity that would do the pharmacare, they would still need many, many years to negotiate the thousands of drugs that are in place. It would take maybe 10 or 20 years to negotiate all the drugs, so the savings that one thinks you might get by establishing this new national pharmacare would take a very, very long period.
On day one, what would have to occur is that the federal and provincial governments would have to pay essentially what the private sector now pays, less, maybe, the fact that they don't cover some, plus some generic substitutions that would take place. If you take those two elements out, we figure we would be still left with about $13 billion that would have to be covered by the government on day one.