We're just finishing a systematic review of Canadian data around cost-related non-adherence. This is a mouthful for saying that because of cost, as far as we can tell, patients aren't taking their medications appropriately. The best estimate we have for that is 15%. There are lots of issues around medication adherence. In high-quality studies, providing free medications hasn't yet been shown to make a big difference in clinical outcomes, but I think that if you asked any physician, within a few minutes they could give you multiple examples of where patients not taking medication properly had landed them in the emergency room with heart attacks, with strokes, with ongoing cancer, and so on. I think it's quite likely—and this is why cost effectiveness is such an important paradigm—that in many situations the benefit is worth the money, but there are other situations where it's very borderline, if worth it at all.
On April 20th, 2016. See this statement in context.