Big Government vs. Everyone Else: The Truth About the Bizarre World of Drug Benefit Programs in Canada
By The Cameron Institute
In the Globe and Mail's Report on Business (ROB) dated November 2016 there appeared an eight-page report entitled, "Big Pharma vs. Everyone". Below is a counterpoint article to the one found in ROB. It has been written to set the record straight and to inform Canadians accurately about the pharmaceutical system and the difficulty in
health accesshealth policy
Rethinking the financing of healthcare in Canada
Canadians need to talk about their healthcare, about who pays for what, when. Lack of money is not the issue; how that money is spent is the issue—what public healthcare is covering and not covering. The same dollar amount can be spent quite differently and more effectively. The 1950s first-dollar, single-payor decision shifted the burden
Canadacost-effectivenesshealth policy
Four persistent rural healthcare challenges
Today, 25% of Canadians live in rural and remote parts of Canada. The evidence is that these Canadians do not enjoy the same health status as citizens living in more urban settings. This article explores four persistent healthcare challenges: population demographics, place, professionals, and public participation. By exploring solutions that some rural communities have used
Urinary incontinence (UI) and fecal incontinence (FI) are embarrassing and debilitating conditions that are becoming collectively a major, growing health concern for men and women of all ages worldwide. In terms of academic study, interest and understanding, fecal incontinence (FI) is the poor cousin of the incontinence twins. Recent research from the Canadian Continence Foundation
National Patient Group Survey re Comprehensive Drug Coverage
There has been a lot of debate about national pharmacare coverage of catastrophic drug costs in government, the media, and among health policy experts, yet patients— who will be the ones most affected—have rarely had their say. To get a better understanding of what patients value in terms of a national drug coverage program The
Canadahealth access
Rule of Law and State Capacity: Keys to Market Access in Developing and Resource-Constrained Markets
Despite the availability of essential medicines in developing countries, one-third of the world's population does not have access to essential medicines due to barriers including money, power, politics, and ideologies. Market failures and lack of political will to create stable, ethical and law-abiding government administrations that can support infrastructure and resources should carry a significant amount
global healthhealth access
5 Principles, 4 Pharmacare Models, 1Panacea?
Pharmaceutical models being touted for Canada do more harm than good for patients in need of innovative but expensive care. The following slides are from The Cameron Institute executive director Wayne Taylor's presentation to the Best Medicine Coalition's recent annual conference.
Canada's Self-Defeating Attack on Innovation
By Philip Stevens & Mark Schultz Over the last decade, it's become increasingly difficult for pharmaceutical companies to protect their intellectual property rights in Canada. Canadian courts have invalidated over 25 patents since 2005 because the inventor did not have proof that widely prescribed medicines performed exactly as predicted in the original patent application. Canada's
innovationintellectual property
Provincial Catastrophic and Disease-specific Drug Plans – Comparisons in Mediocrity
The Cameron Institute believes that it is time for the national government of Canada to help patients by supporting or backstopping health system payors, public and private, to enable individuals to afford the high cost of drugs that are targeted to treat debilitating and often life-threatening conditions. This document shows that existing provincial catastrophic and
Putting children first: An opportunity for Canada's new government
For more than 50 years, the importance of studying new medicines in childhood has been widely recognized. Nonetheless, Health Canada has eschewed policies requiring such evaluation, despite effective reforms elsewhere. In 2012, the Council of Canadian Academies convened an expert panel to assess Canada's research base for labelling of pediatric therapies. The September 2014 report