Re: "More action, less apple pie," Opinion, Dec.2.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh rightfully called out the minority-rule Liberals’ Throne Speech absence of universal medication coverage. However, he had failed to loudly and publicly demand an explanation why their previous Throne Speech (Sept.23, 2020) commitment of ‘pharmacare’, likely made due to NDP pressure, had quietly disappeared when the following budget was tabled.
Soon after that promise, the drug industry reacted with threats of abandoning Canada-based research and development (R&D) if the federal government implemented it. Universal medication coverage, generic brand or not, would negatively affect the industry’s plentiful profits.
Meanwhile, a late-2019 Angus Reid study found that, over the previous year, almost a quarter of Canadians decided against filling a prescription or having one renewed, due to medication unaffordability. Not only is medication less affordable, but other research has revealed that many low-income outpatients who cannot afford to fill their prescriptions end up back in the hospital system as a result, therefore costing far more for provincial and federal government health ministries than if the medication had been covered.
How can we afford to maintain such an absurdity that costs Canada billions extra annually? Or is it simply what big pharma expects in order to maximise its profits? Such information should be made widely public.
Yet I've noticed that our elected leaders and mainstream news media seem to not find heavy corporate lobbyist manipulation of our governments a societal problem requiring rectification. I fear it has become so systematic thus normalized that those who are aware of it, notably politicians and political writers, don’t bother publicly discussing it.
Frank Sterle Jr.
White Rock
