Health committee  Good morning, everybody. I'm the director of the University of Ottawa Centre for Health Law, Policy and Ethics. I want to thank you for listening to me today. I want to thank you for the work that you're doing here today and for your service generally. My brother-in-law in New

Health committee  It was that 1,000 people a year in Ontario under the age of 65 who are diabetic die.

Health committee  Can I answer as well?

Health committee  I think the Supreme Court has ruled on several occasions and in recent times that conditionality in transfers between the federal and provincial governments is acceptable. It is, as I said, quite feasible to include community-based pharmaceuticals inside the Canada Health Act and

Health committee  I'm sure that the variety of witnesses you've heard have been bringing various pieces of evidence to you that will need to be synthesized. I have no doubt that the results you will see are that there are significant problems of access for Canadians to essential medications across

Health committee  There are not really any differences in how private health insurance markets work. I think any scholar in health policy would tell you that those are how health insurance markets work unless government forces them not to. Unless government regulates private health insurers and

Health committee  [Inaudible—Editor]

Health committee  I agree with that. I think we should. It has to be clear that it doesn't mean everything is covered. I think it means that some things that are presently covered may not be covered if we have to expand to afford that. I think that's the quid pro quo, and that has to be clear to C

Health committee  It was the plan back in the 1960s that pharmacare would be included. Unfortunately, we froze in time in 1966, pretty much when we merged the Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act and the Medical Care Act. The problem for the provinces is that they're paying up to 50% o

Health committee  In the Canada Health Act, you could say a list of essential medicines would need to be determined by each province, and those essential medicines would be free at point of access, similar to what is currently a basic requirement of the Canada Health Act, so that there would be no

Health committee  I don't think some of it would actually be that tough. I gave you one example. I don't think correcting my bunion is as important as insulin; do you?

Health committee  Right. I think that if we ask provincial governments to have a fair trade-off among hospital services, physician services, and drugs, we would see a better range of care that is covered for everybody. Some things may fall off that list, but I think that in places around the wor

Health committee  What happens is that the money that is saved by better negotiation of pharmaceutical prices is used to help other things. We've already talked about evidence that people who aren't able to access their drugs are in emergency rooms and are crowding up emergency wards. We need to f

Health committee  Yes, different provinces have different approaches, and that's part of the problem. Across the country we have a wide variety of approaches, and it does depend on where you live. For example, British Columbia does insure everybody, but it has a 30% copayment for pretty much every

Health committee  We have been waiting for 52 years for incrementalism to work. That's quite a long time. That's older than I am.