Is anyone surprised that Justin Trudeau's lap dog caved on Universal Pharma-care and took the consolation prize?
“Canada’s pharmacare bill has officially been introduced in Parliament,”
Global News announced.
“Deal on pharmacare bill has been reached with Liberals ahead of March deadline, NDP says,” was the Canadian Press
headline.
I heard Jagmeet Singh do an interview on Global's, 630 CHED and he was excited. When the interviewer pressed him on why it would be only two drugs he said, "Do you know what this means? People with diabetes and women won't have to pay for contraceptives in Canada.
Folks, there is no pharmacare to dismantle. There isn’t even a deal on pharmacare to dismantle — or to walk away from, to abandon or to otherwise disrespect. Almost literally nothing has happened to underpin this news cycle.
" Yes, the interviewer said, "But that's not Universal Pharma-care."
What we have is
Bill C-64, “An act respecting pharmacare.” Excluding preamble and title page, it is four-and-a-half pages long (two-and-a-quarter really, since it’s bilingual), and it most certainly does not bind the government to implementing a national pharmacare program — which it can’t do on its own anyway, health care being provincial jurisdiction.
Singh tried to avoid answering the question, but finally relented and said, "There isn't going to be a universal pharma-care under the Liberal government.
Paragraph three sets out the purpose of the bill, which is “to guide efforts to improve … the accessibility and affordability of prescription drugs … in collaboration with the provinces, territories, Indigenous peoples and other partners and stakeholders, with the aim of continuing to work toward the implementation of national universal pharmacare.”
This is the best we’re going to get, so if you want Universal Pharma-care you have to vote for an NDP Government." I've quoted what he said, but it is not verbatim.
To guide efforts to improve access to prescription drugs…with the aim of continuing to work toward the implementation of national universal pharmacare.
I wonder how stupid Jagmeet thinks Canadians are.
The Liberals’ and NDP’s “deal on pharmacare,” as
CBC News described it, was big news all week. It was a condition of the NDP maintaining its supply-and-confidence agreement with the government (or at least, party leader Jagmeet Singh said it was) so
it had major political ramifications (if we assume Singh was actually serious about withdrawing support, which we certainly should not).
Ontario hasn't 'opted in' because there is literally nothing to 'opt into'
apple.news
This is the central absurdity of the whole pharmacare discussion: Its proponents frame it as a matter of simple social justice. But
by the government’s own account, roughly 80 per cent of us already have what it considers “adequate” prescription-drug coverage. The Conference Board of Canada
estimates more than 97 per cent of Canadians have at least some coverage.
What kind of “national pharmacare plan” do you really have if you don’t yet even have a list of the drugs it would cover? I submit you have no national pharmacare plan at all — certainly not one anyone or any province would choose over the coverage the vast majority of Canadians already have without a whole lot more information.
Outside the non-coalition coalition that’s definitely not a coalition-type coalition supply-and-confidence bubble in which the Liberals and NDP (and apparently some media) live, what both parties need to sell Canadians on is trading their existing plans, however imperfect, for a new plan, designed in Ottawa, that would cover … well, they’ll get back to you on that.
Universal sans at least two provinces . It covers diabetes and contraception, does that qualify for universal ?
Here’s what the bill says: “The Minister may, if the Minister has entered into an agreement with a province or territory to do so, make payments to the province or territory in order to increase any existing public pharmacare coverage … for specific prescription drugs and related products intended for contraception or the treatment of diabetes.”
Why would anyone do that? Why would any province do that on its people’s behalf? MPs and civil servants no doubt associate government with gold-standard health-care coverage; the rest of us, including the millions of Canadians who already rely on various government programs, do not.
At the moment, thanks to public and private drug insurance plans, just under 90 per cent of the Canadian population has drug insurance. That still leaves
4.9 million of our fellow citizens who, for a variety of reasons, have no insurance at all. Among these, the most vulnerable are surely the 1.1 million Canadians who are not eligible for any coverage, be it public or private.
A national single-payer plan would be a downgrade for most Canadians
apple.news
Maybe we could have just figured out some kind of safety net for the 10%-ish that don’t have a plan?
A targeted program aimed at this latter category of citizens would have the benefit of improving their access to health care without jeopardizing the access of tens of millions of Canadians for whom the current system works much better.
