Health committee  Sure. Our current projected growth rate for this fiscal year is about 8.3% in our pharmaceutical benefit, and that's up from previous years where we were quite a bit lower than that. In our plan, one of the main drivers of growth is always new clients accessing the benefits. Po

Health committee  It's not very many. We get small numbers of them. They're more inquiries than requests.

Health committee  The limited use and exception criteria for coverage are actually built around what CADTH says a drug's place in therapy is. We don't add net new criteria to those kinds of products. If CADTH says pay—

Health committee  Except for a very limited handful of circumstances.

Health committee  We have one for the program, including all the benefits that Sony described at the start of the testimony, so for all of our benefits our admin cost ratio is 5%. That includes all the salaries of Health Canada employees, plus the contract payments, and our contract is with Expres

Health committee  I think the route of the administration of a drug sometimes becomes important, so to Sony's example, if a drug is administered intravenously and there's an alternative product that can be self-injected, that's something that we might take into consideration in looking at a catego

Health committee  For about the past year we've been participating with our provincial and territorial counterparts through the pan-Canadian pharmaceutical alliance. We are representing the other federal departments at that alliance, so when agreements are negotiated through that consortium, we do

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Maybe I'll tackle your comparability question after that. About 99% of pharmacy claims are ultimately approved through NIHB and the majority of those claims—over 90%—are approved on the spot through our electronic claims processing system. There's no out-of-pocket cost for the