Health committee  I don't think we can give you a number. There are a number of companies that operate exclusively in the supplementary health business. Of course they can continue to offer the non-drug portion, but their business would be affected. That would be the Blue Cross types and the sever

Health committee  It's not impossible. Provinces choose to reduce access relative to the access our members have in order to reduce costs. I don't know whether a similar kind of pressure would exist with respect to a universal public pharmacare plan.

Health committee  I'm not sure of your statistics and I'm not sure where they're coming from in terms of the calculations. I haven't seen stats that say that a third of full-time workers don't have coverage. Our stats suggest that 27 million Canadians have health coverage through our members, so

Health committee  I'd appreciate that. There's no question that there are gaps. We as a society should try to find ways to fill those gaps. We're certainly willing to work with provincial and federal governments to find ways of doing that. The vast majority of Canadians can go into a drug store

Health committee  The provinces and the private sector could sit down and work together to identify those gaps, because it's not 100% clear where those gaps are, frankly. Generally, people at the very lowest income level or who don't have jobs get covered by the provinces. Seniors generally get co

Health committee  Well, yes, they could make money; otherwise, I assume they wouldn't be in the business.

Health committee  They would redirect the capital into other businesses.

Health committee  Well, there was some work that was done by researchers with the Canadian Health Policy Institute, which is a health think tank. They did a survey of drugs in 2012, and of the 36 new drugs that were approved by Health Canada, 92% were covered by at least one private drug plan in t

Health committee  Some of the advocates who have supported the concept of a public plan talk about the significant savings associated with having one national plan. The concept there is, of course, that you'd have one bargaining unit that would significantly reduce the cost. Our view is that the

Health committee  Well, it's a highly competitive industry. I believe we have roughly 30 companies that are involved in the business, and they compete very actively for that business. There's not a lot of excess profit in that business. We have been aggressively pushing for lowering the cost of dr

Health committee  It's the government that decides.

Health committee  No.

Health committee  Mr. Frank is with me, so both of us made the statement.

Health committee  Our association was also invited to join the pCPA. We expressed our interest but are still waiting for the governments' answer.

Health committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association represents life and health insurance companies accounting for 99% of the life and health insurance in force across Canada, and the industry provides supplemental health benefits to roughly 27 million Canadi