Parliament has wrapped up for the summer without the passage of a long-awaited national pharmacare bill.
Supporters say Bill C-64 is a first step towards universal, single-payer coverage of all necessary medications, a longstanding demand from the labour movement and public health care advocates.
The legislation would start by making diabetes medication and birth control available to anyone with a health card.
For Moncton resident Marty Bourgeois, coverage can’t come soon enough. Bourgeois, 40, was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes after collapsing in his apartment in 2022. Like many people, he has rationed insulin.
“I haven’t been able to keep up with my upkeep because of reduced financial means,” he said.
Bourgeois, who works at a low-wage and labour-intensive job, pays $88 per month in premiums for his enrollment in the New Brunswick Drug Plan, which partially covers the cost of his medication, but not equipment such as syringes.
With his premiums factored in, Bourgeois estimates that he pays about $250 to $275 a month for the life-saving treatments he needs. Costs can reach upwards of $350 if faulty equipment needs to be replaced. “It’s not convenient,” he said in an interview.
He’s not alone. Patients often ration their medication and make hard choices between rent, groceries, and prescription drugs.
In Canada, the only country with universal health care but no universal drug coverage outside of hospitals, low-income people tend to lack private insurance and are more likely to forgo medications because of cost.
The problem might be especially acute in New Brunswick, which has one of the highest rates of diabetes in Canada, according to data from the Canadian Chronic Disease Surveillance System.
The provincial government has defended its limited coverage, pointing to recent improvements introduced last year. Those reforms were modest, lifting an age cap on coverage for specific devices that inject insulin into the skin and monitor glucose levels. Nova Scotia soon followed suit with a similar policy change.
Those changes earned the Higgs government praise from the industry-funded patient advocacy group Diabetes Canada.
But it’s all part of a patchwork of coverage that public health care advocates hope to replace with a universal, single-payer scheme.
Check out nbmediacoop.org for the full story.
David Gordon Koch is a journalist with the NB Media Co-op. This reporting has been made possible in part by the Government of Canada, administered by the Canadian Association of Community Television Stations and Users (CACTUS).
24 июн 2024
