Hopefully my audio will work this time.
We face inequity across the country in how cancer patients have access to their cancer drugs. We know that patients today want to be in their homes. We hear this over and over again. Take-home cancer drugs—and I here I would love the physicians to jump in on this—are available to patients across the country to pick up at their pharmacy and take at home, specifically oral chemo cancer medication.
We don't see this adequately addressed across the country. For example, in some provinces, if you pick up your medication at the pharmacy and take it at home, that is covered. In the province of Ontario, for example, if you are taking your oral chemo in the hospital, it's covered, but if you go to the pharmacy and pick it up yourself, it's not. Again, it speaks to that financial burden on cancer patients.
We see a role for the federal government to work with the provinces across our country to address this issue of take-home cancer drugs. We don't want cancer patients to have to pay out of pocket, but want this to be covered equally across the country so that all Canadians have access to take-home oral cancer medication without having to pay out of pocket for it.