Universal pharmacare would save Canadians $4.2B a year, parliamentary budget officer says
HOW CANADA WORKS THEIR "Medicare for all" universal, single-payer health-care systems
The office estimates roughly $28.5 billion was spent on prescription drugs in 2015-16, and $24.6 billion of that total would have been eligible under a pharmacare program. Canadian Doctors for Medicare says the patchwork way medications are covered — government programs, drug coverage for public employees, workplace compensation programs and tax incentives for private insurance plans — fragments purchasing power and the ability to negotiate competitive prices for medications with drug companies.
The Canadian Health Coalition said Quebec's list of covered drugs doesn't take advantage of the economies of scale available to the federal government, which could purchase medicine on behalf of the whole population, and that this model offers a worst-case scenario of savings.
"Understandably, people would have this sense that somehow this is going to end up being a white elephant, it'll blow out of control. All you really need to do is look to countries abroad, in particular, countries that have universal, single-payer health-care systems like Canadian medicare," Morgan said.
Morgan gives the examples of Scandinavian countries, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. "They all spend dramatically less than Canada, not just on prescription drugs but also on over-the-counter drugs as well. Systems abroad show us that if you do this right, according to good practices in terms of deciding based on high-quality evidence [on] what drugs are worthy of universal coverage and … you sit down with manufacturers and hammer out an appropriate and fair pricing scheme for the drug, you end up finding there is savings available."
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/pharmacare-savings-1.4311618
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