Thank you all very much for coming.
I found this very interesting. This is outside my training. I'm a physician, although I was raised by a lawyer. In retrospect, he's right. After listening to this, I know I would have enjoyed law.
I've been looking at this from a physician's standpoint. I see things like the first-hand adverse effects on the patients who can't afford their medications and the data as to the potential cost to the health care system. This has been very near and dear to my heart, this whole study.
We've been going through these different points, which are fascinating, about the different routes we can take. You had the question, what would this look like? You would have liked having that question beforehand.
We'd like to have something to give you. I'd like to propose a scenario to review, to see if you see any bumps in the road with this arrangement.
If you started with a group of medical experts and you had an evidence-based formulary and they said, “These are the drugs that are essential, and they will be covered. We will only cover the generic versions of them. We won't cover anything more expensive than what has been proven safe.” Now we'd have this evidence-based formulary. That's step one.
Step two, have the federal government negociate one bulk buy of all these items on the list for the provinces. Step three, apportion these drugs to the provinces. You will give these to people who need them, free of charge. We've paid for them. They're covered. Then, if the province wanted to offer additional coverage of any other drugs, you wouldn't be stepping on their toes on that. Can you think of anything under Canadian law, the Constitution, or anything that would prevent that or cause any legal challenge?