Ontario should back off on seniors’ drug costs

Posted on March 3, 2016 in Health Policy Context

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TheStar.com – Opinion/Editorials – Making most seniors pay more for their prescriptions is a wrong-headed approach and the sooner the Ontario government backs away from it, the better.
Mar 01 2016.   Editorial
The ink is barely dry on last week’s Ontario budget and already Premier Kathleen Wynne is conceding the possibility that her government didn’t “get it right” on the sensitive issue of prescription drugs for seniors.
She’s correct: making most seniors pay more for their prescriptions is a wrong-headed approach and the sooner the government backs away from it, the better.

It’s the biggest flaw in what was generally a well-crafted budget, considering Ontario’s difficult financial situation.

To give the government credit, it was trying to help out the very poorest seniors with their prescription costs. It raised the low-income threshold for singles from $16,018 a year to $19,300. That means 173,000 more seniors won’t have to pay any deductible for their drugs.

But to pay for that change, the government plans to nearly double the deductible for those living on more than $19,300 (or $32,300 for a couple) from $100 a year to $170. And it will make them pay a dollar more per prescription as a co-pay.

That may not be a hardship for those with comfortable pensions and lots of savings. But as we wrote last week in this space, it’s a “slap in the face” to the many thousands who are close to the cut-off level and scraping by on near-poverty incomes. Making it harder for them to pay for their medicines is both socially retrograde and politically stupid.

Challenged on this move in the legislature just four days after Finance Minister Charles Sousa brought down the budget, the premier immediately backed away. She promised to “look carefully” at the new measure, and “if we didn’t get it right then we will make a change in terms of that threshold.”

That’s the least the government should do. In addition to reviewing the cut-off level, it should not ask other seniors to pay more for their prescriptions. At a time when there’s a growing realization that the time has finally come for a national pharmacare program, the last thing governments should be doing is chipping away at the existing building blocks of such a plan.

Ironically, Wynne’s own health minister, Eric Hoskins, has been pushing for national pharmacare. As recently as mid-January, at a meeting of health ministers from across the country, Hoskins was making the case for putting universal drug coverage back on the national agenda.

The benefits are clear. Pharmacare would be an enormous step towards making sure every Canadian gets the medicine he or she needs. People on modest incomes should not have to struggle to afford the drugs their doctor says they need.

At the same time, a national drug formulary and bulk buying should reduce the overall cost of drugs for Canadians. We now pay the second highest per capita drug costs among major countries, behind only the United States. Studies show the savings could amount to billions of dollars a year.

Bringing in national pharmacare will involve difficult negotiations among the provinces, Ottawa and the pharmaceutical industry. But as politicians like Hoskins press for it, it makes no sense to dismantle the biggest existing model – public coverage for seniors’ prescription drug costs.

Sadly, many provinces have watered down seniors’ drug benefits over the past decade, creating a patchwork of benefits. Ontario should not continue down that path, especially at a time when the case for a comprehensive national drug plan is stronger than ever.

< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2016/03/01/ontario-should-back-off-on-seniors-drug-costs-editorial.html >

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