We've heard from the Canadian Association for Pharmacy Distribution Management and the Canadian Organization for Rare Disorders. I think both of them sounded a note of caution about Bill C-64 being potentially a threat to access to drugs for rare diseases. Perhaps I'm not so surprised about that coming from Ms. Berg, but I am a little from Dr. Wong-Rieger.
Certainly, this bill does not create a single-payer system. We don't know as yet what national pharmacare would look like. Potentially, though, it would be a single-payer system.
I would have thought, particularly for Dr. Wong-Rieger, that there would be benefits with a single-payer system. I would have thought it would be more efficient. There are certainly cost savings to be had. There are certainly economies of scale in having one system. Right now, we have all these different providers. Each of these providers has its own management, and each of these managers and CEOs takes a bit of that money. This is money, in an employer-employee drug plan, that would probably otherwise be going to the employee. Instead it goes to the profits of the company providing the plans.
If you were to have one big plan administered by the government, you get economies of scale. There would be no money being siphoned off for profits, and there wouldn't be these many bureaucracies dealing with these different plans. There would be savings. In addition, if you buy 10 million pills at one time, you're going to get a better deal from a manufacturer than if you buy 100,000. If there was more money overall in Canada to buy drugs for everyone, wouldn't we then be able to afford drugs for rare diseases, which are often expensive?
Also, Ms. Berg, you were talking about shortages. Wouldn't we have money to provide for an emergency stockpile of medications, so we wouldn't have those shortages?
Perhaps I'll start with you, Dr. Wong-Rieger.