Health committee  Well, it's a transfer of those costs from the private sector to government. The portion that we don't know—and this was the question that was raised a little earlier—is how much of that private insurance that is provided is actually paid for by the governments or public entities.

Health committee  The structure that is going to run this administratively is not something that we have taken into account in terms of how this plan is going to be implemented. If the program is approved and the government wants to go ahead with it, there obviously have to be negotiations between

Health committee  I'm sure there are others who can do it and have tried to do it. I am not aware of any in a specific study. Jason, have you?

Health committee  It is likely to be less than that. It's also likely to be more than that, because we are also making assumptions about increasing consumption, which again is an estimate, based on the numbers that we have in the literature. The consumption may actually be higher than that. That's

Health committee  Pardon me?

Health committee  You are part of the cost to the federal government for the insurance it provides to its employees, including Parliament, the RCMP, and the military.

Health committee  They're not in those numbers.

Health committee  It would be extremely difficult for us to do that, yes.

Health committee  The public we mention is not what the government uses for its own employees. That is the coverage they provide for their population. The various provinces have public insurance for certain groups in their population, such as seniors or people with low incomes. That's the cost for

Health committee  Each province is different. Each province has a different kind of program. As I said, Ontario, for example, covers all the seniors and also some people on welfare. British Columbia has a different kind of public program. They have some income testing, some means testing measures

Health committee  I don't think we have had many reactions. We have seen positive reports, and we are seeing a lot of questions from the public in terms of how this program is going to be implemented. A lot of people are interested in the implementation of the program rather than just the cost, an

Health committee  That's correct, because, as I said, measuring the health benefits of having the coverage versus not having the coverage is extremely difficult to estimate. It depends on the specific situation, the patients, and the kinds of problems the patients have. Instead of getting into t

Health committee  It would take us into an area where we have not been before. That's going to be a completely different area. We do have expertise in terms of the data on pharmacare. Carleigh is obviously an expert in our office now, but in terms of getting the health benefits of this, it is movi

Health committee  Typically in our costing of any program we do not take into account the secondary impacts like the one you mention. The reason for that is that it's very difficult to actually measure those things and come up with an estimate that is reasonable and acceptable to everybody. That's

Health committee  Well, as I said, typically we don't do that because it's extremely difficult and you're getting into the area of cost-benefit analysis of a policy. We don't really do that. We only look at the direct financial cost or benefits of any program in that form. We're trying to be mor