I would not disagree with that. Let's put it that way.
I think for patients, and especially with higher-priced medicines, innovative medicines, we have always looked to the private drug plans because they can make these drugs available to the patients quickly. What we want to do is make sure we have a public system that can respond appropriately.
I don't want to bring the private drugs down, but I can't disagree with the fact that we need to have, especially in this arena, a single system. That single system is going to be able to take the evidence and to develop a plan.
To be honest with you, we see the private insurers going that route as well. The two of us just came back from Washington. At an international society meeting on patient-reported outcomes, two of the biggest private insurers in the U.S. were talking about the HTA approaches they are bringing in.
We have met recently with private insurers in Canada who are looking at these kinds of managed programs.
I will say that I shudder a bit, because they do not necessarily have the expertise at their disposal in order to do as good a job as the national agency that we have.
As much as we may deplore CADTH, in terms of its coming up with right decisions in as timely as possible way, it stands as one of the best HTA agencies in the world.