Good afternoon. It's a pleasure to be here.
My name is Stephen Frank, and I'm pleased to be here today in my role as president and CEO of the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association. An important part of my job is representing the 27 million Canadians who are covered by workplace and other health benefit plans.
Canada's life and health insurers believe that all Canadians should be able to access the drugs they have been prescribed. To achieve this, we know that both public and privately-funded plans are a necessity. Unfortunately, Bill C-64 falls short of its goal to ensure that all Canadians have access to the medications they need. It puts what's working well today at risk.
Workplace benefit plans are an essential pillar of the Canadian health care system. In the most recent year, Canada's life and health insurers paid for over 35% of prescription drug spending in the country. Our plans cover more drugs than even the most generous public plan.
In fact, 85% of Canadians say that their health insurance plan saves them money. They don't want to see their plan disrupted. Given the choice, they would overwhelmingly prefer that the government focus on providing coverage to Canadians who don't have it.
On behalf of the majority of Canadians who already have drug coverage, I ask members what this proposal will mean for the average Canadian family. Despite much of the discussion about this bill by various stakeholders, it goes further than contemplating a new pharmacare program for diabetes and contraceptive drugs: It requires the federal government to begin the rollout of a broad pharmacare program for an essential medicines list no later than 12 months after the bill gets royal assent. There are material and many unknown risks to disrupting existing programs for millions of Canadians.
The Minister of Health has stated that people who have an existing drug plan are going to continue to enjoy the access they have to their drugs. If that's the minister's intent, it's not at all clear from this bill. As many of the questions reinforced today, its text is ambiguous. It repeatedly calls for universal single-payer pharmacare in Canada with no mention of workplace benefit plans. Read in its entirety, the bill could result in practical and even legal barriers to our ability to provide Canadians with the drug benefits that they currently have.
For the majority of Canadians, therefore, this plan, as it's currently written, risks disrupting existing prescription drug coverage paid for by employers, limiting choice and using scarce federal resources to simply replace existing coverage, while leaving a huge gap for uninsured Canadians who rely on other medications beyond diabetic drugs and contraceptives.
There is a better way.
For example, using the $1.5 billion that has been allocated to this program to target those without coverage would allow the government to provide thousands of medications to several hundred thousand Canadians who currently lack drug plans. In other words, we could, as a country, use scarce federal dollars wisely to make a profound impact on the lives of those who do not have drug plans, while protecting the benefits that are currently working so well for the vast majority.
In conclusion, we believe that this legislation needs to be significantly amended to focus on ensuring universal drug coverage for all Canadians by addressing any gaps in the drug insurance that currently exists and to be clear with Canadians about what exactly we're trying to do.
I look forward to your questions. Thank you.