Health committee  To start with, I'd say that the figure of one in 12 Canadians having a rare disease emphasizes maybe the wrong message that the Canadian organization for rare diseases is giving. It seems to imply that rarity isn't very rare and that therefore the impact of making decisions to fu

Health committee  The fundamental problem with almost every health care system is that they actually haven't defined their objective. Unless we know what the health care system is trying to achieve, we can't address whether or not it has achieved that objective well. The only health care system t

Health committee  It's really the crux of the question, isn't it? It comes down to what we want from our health care system. It also comes down to what we, as a society, feel we need to do for specific populations or problems facing us. I've come today and said that my idea is that maybe what we'r

Health committee  The problem there is that you're making the decision after the fact, rather than before the fact. First you need to come up with your defining rationale for the reason we have a health care system. If it's not to maximize population health, that's fine. I'm an analyst and I'm an

Health committee  I can't talk about every rare disease, but the idea that we're going to leave them alone to die, I think, is very much what the pharmaceutical companies are telling you. For example, in the case of Soliris—and I can very much understand that in other situations that's not the ca

Health committee  Not specifically, no. We have a public health care system under financial stress. It's not adequately funded, and the aim of that system should be to try to improve the overall health of the population. Therefore, we need to have the courage to make decisions that we fund those

Health committee  Thank you. Thanks to all my fellow speakers who have come today. My name is Doug Coyle. I'm a professor at the school of epidemiology and public health at the University of Ottawa. I'm a health economist and have worked in this research area for the past 28 years. I have no conf

Health committee  I think that might be a better question for Dr. Perry than for me.

Health committee  I think we have to be really clear. There are a large number of Canadians who live in a fairly poverty-stricken environment. Any type of copayment really affects their ability to access health care. I think the fact that we now charge people to take an ambulance to emergency is s

Health committee  Yes. I've done quite a lot of work in the area of drugs for rare disease and I'd recommend, if you get a chance, to go on a website called Million Dollar Meds that I've been working on with colleagues at UBC. It's interesting that rarity comes up as a factor in discussions like

Health committee  Thank you very much for your question. I'll answer in English, because French with a Scottish accent is an experience you don't want to hear. I think the idea of independence is crucial, but transparency is equally crucial. We need a system put in place that the policy-makers

Health committee  That's an excellent question. As I said, I sit on the Ontario Committee to Evaluate Drugs and make funding recommendations. We're supposed to have the leverage to ask for physician education as part of our decisions. There is no funding available for independent physician educati

Health committee  We do the same for technologies right across the health care system. We decide what's covered and what's not. I have a chronic hip problem. My physiotherapy is not covered under the Ontario Health Insurance Plan. We've decided that's not something that is beneficial to cover. Th

Health committee  I think that's not really part of the issue here today. I think the issue here today is how we are going to make decisions at a national level over what is covered through the publicly funded health care system. The decision about whether or not people have access to other health

Health committee  I think I answered that question.