Mr. Speaker, having a drug is one thing but the ability for people to access the drug is another.
Recent studies have shown that one in five patients with a chronic illness is not able to afford prescriptions so the medication is taken sporadically, which means that the medication is not doing the good it should do. People are getting sicker. When they go into a hospital this increases hospital costs and acute care for the patient. The ability to afford prescriptions is an important factor.
Canada is the only country in the industrialized world with a universal health care system that does not have a universal pharmaceutical strategy. One of the core objectives in the 2004 accord was to look at a national pharmaceutical strategy. The government, in its wisdom or lack thereof, completely ignored that in 2006. What we now have is one of the most costly and non-accessible pharmaceutical systems in the world.
We should be looking at what other countries are doing. New Zealand, for example, has a system whereby when the government buys a drug for a formulary, the cost is so much lower than the cost in Canada. We are paying the second-highest cost for drugs in the world. This is really ridiculous.
We need to look at a good pharmaceutical strategy. If we had the United Kingdom's national pharmaceutical strategy, we could save $14 billion a year. If we had the New Zealand pharmaceutical strategy, we could save more than that. That money could be put into the health care system in terms of health promotion and disease prevention, palliative care, mental health, all of the pieces that are missing right now.
It is like being penny-wise and pound foolish. I do not understand why the government has not let that happen and has let it lag.