TORONTO -Improving access to expensive but innovative drug therapies and making vital prescription drugs more affordable for Canadians ranked among the key priorities in a progress report released Thursday on a national strategy aimed at sustaining Canadian medicare.
"From the health ministers' point of view, the issue is two-fold: the sustainability of our health care system and our ability to provide health care in the future, and individual Canadians' ability to afford the medications they require right now," said British Columbia Health Minister George Abbott, co-chairman of the ministerial task force for the National Pharmaceuticals Strategy.
Canada's premiers asked the country's health ministers to establish the task force to develop a national pharmaceuticals strategy as part of the 2004 Health Accord.
Quebec maintains its own pharmacare program and is not a part of developing the strategy.
Abbott was joined at Thursday's news conference by his counterparts from Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador, who agreed a national pharmaceuticals strategy is vital to ensure equal access and delivery of health care across Canada.
Private and public expenditures on prescription drugs have grown by about 12 per cent annually since 2000, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, with prescription drugs reaching an estimated $20 billion in 2005.
In addition to developing a common list of drugs, or formulary, that would be covered by public health care plans across Canada, the task force is developing strategies to speed up the delivery of generic drugs and to work on improving the patented drug pricing system.
Two per cent of Canadians have neither public nor private drug coverage, and up to 20 per cent of Canadians are underinsured for catastrophic levels of drug costs.
Abbott said families shouldn't have to suffer an "economic catastrophe" should they or their family be afflicted by disease due to the high cost of drugs.
To that end, the task force will analyze two potential coverage policies to help protect sick Canadians and their families from facing financial ruin while gaining access to needed drug therapies - many which aren't covered by provincial or territorial health plans.
The options include basing drug costs on a variable percentage from zero to nine per cent depending on family income, or a fixed 4.3 per cent, the average percentage above which current drug plans currently consider costs catatrosphic.
Developing a framework to provide equal access to expensive drugs for rare diseases will be based on findings from a pre-marketing study announced in June on costly drugs used to treat Fabry's disease.
The federal, provincial and territorial governments hope the study will provide evidence as to whether governments should pay for the drugs sought by patients suffering from the rare genetic disorder.
Federal Health Minister Tony Clement has said the exercise should also help address the general issue of so-called "orphan drugs" - drugs that treat conditions so rare it is difficult to test and license them in the way most pharmaceuticals are brought to market.
"The issues around expensive drugs for rare diseases are growing, and unfortunately most of the solutions to date, at least, have been ad hoc," Abbott said. "That's simply not adequate to meet this challenge."
"It's clear we need a national approach, and governments will draw on a wide range of expertise both from within government as well as the research community, patients, providers to develop a comprehensive EDRD framework for the future."
In a statement released Thursday, the Canadian Health Coalition criticized the federal government for failing to commit to funding expanded drug coverage across the country.
"The Strategy is excellent, but implementation of a key element appears to be stalled due to lack of federal commitment to finance expanded drug coverage," said chairwoman Kathleen Connors.
"Canadians deserve an actual plan for universal public drug insurance not just further policy discussion."
"It is morally and politically unacceptable for access to drug coverage to depend on where you live or work."
