There are many pre-conceived notions about private drug coverage in Canada that are really myths. There are also significant differences between public and private drug plan coverage that result in different coverage decisions. It is important to understand these myths and differences to better understand the overall Canadian healthcare system. Myth #1 – Public and …
On December 6th, Health Canada announced the Protecting Canadians from Unsafe Drugs Act giving powers to the Minister of Health to force companies to recall or stop the sale of any therapeutic drug product or device marketed in Canada. The tabled legislation comes hot on the heels of an investigative report in the Toronto Star outlining Health Canada’s inability to unilaterally …
Like many Ontarians, I have been moved by the request of Kimm Fletcher to have the Ontario government pay for the drug Avastin to treat her recurrent brain cancer. Ms. Fletcher is 41 years old and the mother of two young children. It sounds like her brain cancer is growing aggressively despite the best treatments …
A student recently started one of my patients on the oral contraceptive pill YAZ. When I asked why that particular birth control pill was chosen instead of all the alternatives, I was shocked by the response: “We have samples.” The student was referring to the medication samples that are delivered to clinics by representatives of …
“We made a practical and open work environment for engineers and shop workers, forcing the guys behind the drawing boards onto the shop floor to see how their ideas were being translated into actual parts and to make any necessary changes on the spot.” -from Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed …
At a national health policy conference recently, Ontario’s Health Minister Deb Matthews made a few notable comments. Among them was a request that policy experts applaud government officials when they do the right thing. Too often, good healthcare policy gets blocked by a very vocal minority of stakeholders. Minister Matthews also said that expanding prescription …
Most people are probably aware of Fair PharmaCare, British Columbia’s universal public plan that covers everyone for catastrophic drug costs (other provinces have similar programs, such as Trillium in Ontario). BC’s program pays for nearly a billion dollars of prescription drugs every year. Our provincial government also directly and indirectly pays for a lot of …
A drug company sales representative stands in front of a class of University of Toronto medical students and delivers her well-rehearsed sales pitch about the benefits of her company’s birth control pill. Hold on: Isn’t this sort of interaction between the pharmaceutical industry and med students supposed to be forbidden because of concerns about conflicts …
“In God we trust; all others [must] bring data.” – W. Edwards Deming Baycol, Vioxx. Avandia. These medications became household names not for their widespread prescription worth billions of dollars in sales, but for their well-publicized safety concerns that have touched the lives of millions of patients and their families. More than 80 new patented medications …
Ritika Goel’s recent commentary on Healthy Debate about the pharmaceutical industry’s influence on physicians got me thinking about other kinds of conflict of interest within the health care system, particularly related to health services researchers. There is a great need for researchers to be independent when conducting their work, and to be able to speak …
Each weekday, staff at the Exceptional Access Program (EAP) of the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care receive between 250 and 300 requests for special prescription medications. These prescription drugs—typically expensive medications that are felt to be cost effective only when used to treat selected patients with specific problems—are not on the province’s regular …
I breathe a sigh of relief as the announcement system comes on after an 8-minute clinical encounter: “please begin patient feedback.” I especially enjoy this part of our weekly clinical skills session, and not only because it heralds the end of an encounter wherein I, as a medical student, nervously attempt to recall the many …
Health Canada’s Health Products and Food Branch has a mandate of “minimizing health risk factors to Canadians while maximizing the safety provided by the regulatory system for health products”. The FDA’s mandate is “protecting the public health by assuring that… human and veterinary drugs, and vaccines and other biological products and medical devices intended for …
Want to buy a $100 coffee? Sounds absurd, doesn’t it? However, it’s equally absurd that this is how much more Albertans pay for some generic drugs than people in other countries. Take, for instance, 20mg of the cholesterol-lowering drug simvastatin. Albertans pay 90 cents for each tablet. In New Zealand, the government drug plan buys the …
I am a born and raised Canadian now living and working in the UK. Having been in the UK for over two years, I tend to draw comparisons between the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) and the Canadian health system. Before I start here with my commentary, I want to point out that, despite its …
Why do so many doctors still think they are invincible to the influence of the pharmaceutical industry? Attractive, well-dressed, charismatic drug reps with pearly smiles and shiny flow charts still wait in waiting rooms. Lectures and conferences still occur where lunch is paid for by the pharmaceutical industry. Research studies are still published where investigators receive grants …
Reforms to the way that Ontario community pharmacies are compensated for professional services, combined with an expanded scope of practice for pharmacists, are presenting major adjustment and implementation challenges for the profession. The changes are part of a culture change ushered in by a general shift in health care towards a push for greater inter-professional …
Canada is the only country in the world that provides universal public insurance for medical and hospital care but not for prescription drugs. Is this a desirable divide in health policy or a failing of our health care system? If the latter, what would our system ideally look like? In an effort to answer this …
What do you do as a healthcare provider when you know your patient can’t afford the medicines you are prescribing? In the era of evidence-based medicine, a greater focus has been placed on ensuring that patients are prescribed the most effective treatments, but rarely do we discuss what happens when a prescription leaves the physician’s …