Estimated effects of adding universal public coverage of an essential medicines list to existing public drug plans in Canada

Catastrophic drug coverage: utilization insights from the Ontario Trillium Drug Program

“…Recent attention on pharmacare strategies has largely focused on the need for coverage of essential medications and has ignored the rising cost of new and expensive medications. 8,20 Importantly, we found that an increasing proportion of beneficiaries are in the groups with middle and high deductibles, signalling an increasing economic burden of rising drug costs. Our results may be influenced by current private payer trends as employers and private insurers, overburdened by the price of expensive drugs, may be leveraging the TDP as a means of saving costs.…”

How to pay for national pharmacare

“…12 Although there is uncertainty about what such a program will actually cost, these estimates are on par with "worst-case scenarios" in peer-reviewed academic studies. 13,14 The Officer also makes the reasonable assumption that, at least initially, Canada's system will be more expensive than universal, single-payer pharmacare systems in comparable high-income countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom. 3,15 As summarized in Table 1, the Parliamentary Budget Officer assumes that all but $500 million of the cost of drugs on the national formulary would be publicly financed.…”

Development of a preliminary essential medicines list for Canada

“…Efforts to analyze national and provincial data are in progress. 25 This preliminary list excludes cancer treatments and other medicines prescribed outside of primary care. It will only be useful if it is accepted and implemented by the public, clinicians and decision-makers.…”