Mr. Lepik, I want to turn to you. That was very powerful testimony. Thank you for detailing with such precision what your monthly expenses are.
By my figures, the blood glucose monitor, the insulin pump and the insulin itself add up to—if you add in the $7,000 replacement every five years—over $7,000 a year. That's $900 a year for insulin and $5,600 annually, I think, for the blood glucose monitor pump. Maybe I'm getting them mixed up, but it's certainly $6,000 or $7,000 a year. Do you know people with type 1 diabetes who are going without their medication, monitoring or any other tools or resources because they can't afford it?
I think we have lost Mr. Lepik.
While we're waiting, I'm going to come back to this. I think we have a very clear picture here. We have provincial variation. We have patients who are rationing or going without what they need to manage what is a life-threatening if not potentially fatal disease. We have the issue of more expensive complications down the road if this is left untreated, whether that's amputation, blindness, kidney failure or stroke down the road, which obviously costs the system much more money.
Would the answer not be that we should be moving to a universal public pharmacare system whereby patients get their necessary medication provided through our public system, just like any other medically necessary service? Would that be your position, Ms. Corcoran?