Between July 27 and Aug. 3, Pollara Strategic Insights surveyed 4,173 adults across the country. The online survey found that, while 84 per cent of respondents support the creation of a “national universal prescription drug coverage program” to ensure all Canadians access to medicine they need, only 5 per cent ranked such a program as their first or second health-care priority. Another 9 per cent put “medication/prescriptions” in their top two priorities.
Meanwhile, 21 per cent identified senior care and the aging population in their top two, followed by 18 per cent who prioritized wait times and faster access to health care.
Pollara chief strategist Don Guy, a former Liberal operative at Queen’s Park, said the research shows Canadians are not preoccupied with national pharmacare.
It is “not by any stretch of the imagination a top-of-mind priority,” he said.
The Pollara survey was funded by the Neighbourhood Pharmacy Association of Canada, a group that represents 6,500 pharmacies across the country. According to Pollara, online samples aren’t officially assigned margins of error, but as a “guideline” for this poll, it provides a margin of error of +/- 1.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20.
Earlier this year, the Liberal government created an advisory committee chaired by former Ontario health minister Eric Hoskins to study and recommend options for the creation of a national pharmacare program by the spring of 2019. Two months later, Parliament’s Standing Committee on Health recommended that Canada create a universal single-payer program to cover prescription drugs.
But Finance Minister Bill Morneau had already tempered expectations. The day after announcing the pharmacare committee, Morneau told reporters that the government wants to create program that “deals with the gaps” in coverage but “doesn’t throw out the system that we currently have.”
New Democrat MPs seized the statement as evidence the Liberals weren’t serious about pharmacare and have called for the creation of a universal, single-payer drug program.
Pollara’s survey suggests a minority of Canadians is sold on the idea. Asked to choose between four options for pharmacare, 30 per cent of respondents said they prefer a universal program that covers all Canadians and replaces existing public and private insurance plans.
The remaining 70 per cent chose other options that included: a government plan for drugs not covered by private insurance and for people with no coverage at all (35 per cent); public coverage only for those without existing insurance (20 per cent); and a pharmacare program that focuses only on Canadians facing “extreme circumstances” like the need for expensive drugs to treat rare diseases (15 per cent).
When asked to define the term “universality,” 62 per cent of respondents said it means “everyone receives the same kind and quality” of care, while 55 per cent said it means everyone has access to the same health services. Only 25 per cent said it means the government pays for health services, and 23 per cent said it means “no one can buy their way to better or faster health care.”
Canada currently has a patchwork of prescription drug programs through private and public insurance coverage. According to the Conference Board of Canada, 95 per cent of Canadians have some form of drug coverage.
At the same time, overall drug spending in Canada has skyrocketed from $2.6 billion in 1985 to $33.8 billion last year, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information.
A study published this year in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found that almost 1 million Canadians cut back on food and heat spending to afford their medication, while nearly 2 million people have reported not being able to afford at least one of their prescribed drugs in the past year.
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